$ perl xxxyyyzzz.pl The regular expression: (?-imsx:(.*)(_\d{11,}?.*)(\.\w+)) 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): ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ( group and capture to \1: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- .* any character except \n (0 or more times (matching the most amount possible)) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ) end of \1 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ( group and capture to \2: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- _ '_' ---------------------------------------------------------------------- \d{11,}? digits (0-9) (at least 11 times (matching the least amount possible)) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- .* any character except \n (0 or more times (matching the most amount possible)) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ) end of \2 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ( group and capture to \3: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- \. '.' ---------------------------------------------------------------------- \w+ word characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9, _) (1 or more times (matching the most amount possible)) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ) end of \3 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ) end of grouping ----------------------------------------------------------------------