perl -MYAPE::Regex::Explain -e 'print YAPE::Regex::Explain->new(qr/^[\w.-]+\@myinfo.com/)->explain' The regular expression: (?-imsx:^[\w.-]+\@myinfo.com) matches as follows: NODE EXPLANATION ---------------------------------------------------------------------- (?-imsx: group, but do not capture (case-sensitive) (with ^ and $ matching normally) (with . not matching \n) (matching whitespace and # normally): ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ^ the beginning of the string ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [\w.-]+ any character of: word characters (a-z, A- Z, 0-9, _), '.', '-' (1 or more times (matching the most amount possible)) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- \@ '@' ---------------------------------------------------------------------- myinfo 'myinfo' ---------------------------------------------------------------------- . any character except \n ---------------------------------------------------------------------- com 'com' ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ) end of grouping ----------------------------------------------------------------------