for my $mail (qw( bar@foo.com.com bar@foo.computers.com bar@com.computers.com bar@b.com.computers.org)) { print "Looking at '$mail'\n"; printf "index '.com': %d\n", index '.com', $mail; printf "index '.com.com': %d\n", index '.com.com', $mail; printf "rindex '.com': %d\n", rindex '.com', $mail; }