use strict;
use warnings;

my $word = 'Wilmer",';

$word =~ s/^  \W*?          # ignore any leading punc 
            ( \w .*? )      # swallow everything lazily
            (?: \W+  )? $   # ignore any trailing punc
          /$1/x;            

print $word;

##</code><code>##

$word =~ s/(?:^\W+)|(?:\W+$)//g;

##</code><code>##

               Rate     capture non_capture
capture     16561/s          --        -28%
non_capture 22861/s         38%          --