#! /usr/bin/perl use strict ; use warnings ; my @words = qw( brian0 brian- -brian bri--an Bria-n br-i-an brian ) ; print map { "[$_]" } @words ; print "\n" ; my @good = grep { /^[[:alpha:]]/ # Starts with a letter && /[[:alpha:]]$/ # Ends with a letter && ! /--/ # No consecutive hyphens } @words ; print map { "[$_]" } @good ; print "\n" ;