#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; my @data = ('12 chem1', '1/2 chem2', '(N+1) chem3', '2M chem4', 'N chem5'); my $chem; foreach (@data) { $chem = reverse $_; $chem =~ s/^\S+//; $chem = reverse $chem; print $chem . "\n"; }