It seems like you don't need to define exactly what characters can go in your value. You just want what's inside the single quotes after 'cusip'. '(.*?)' means the shortest possible string between two quotes (so the text 'ab' cd' would yield "ab" and not "ab' cd").

But it looks like you are trying to parse JSON. If you need to get more than one value from your string, decoding the serialized data into a perl structure may be more helpful. JSON is pretty easy to use.

Edit: Corion pointed out that the 71-24 doesn't look like serialized data (or at least not JSON), so while this could still be valid javascript or python code, JSON may get confused.

Maybe just read perlre on how to construct character classes other than \w.

Also, $1 will only have a value if the match was successful, so the correct idiom to use is:

if( $string =~ /.../ ) {
    print " first is : $1\n\n";
} else {
    print "Nothing found in <<$string>>\n";
};
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You can construct an extended character class inside square brackets but make sure the hyphen is at the beginning or end of the character class or it will be interpreted as denoting a range, e.g [A-Za-z]. An alternative to Eily's non-greedy match is a negated character class, i.e. match anything that isn't a single quote.

use strict;
use warnings;

use feature qw{ say };

my $string = "{'totalResultsCount':71-24,'securityList':[{'cusip':'91%
+279-6.H:Y8','issueDate':'2016-06-02T00:00:00','securityType':'Bill'}"
+;

say $1 if $string =~ m{'cusip':'([\w:%.-]+)'};
say $1 if $string =~ m{'cusip':'([^']+)};
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Produces

91%279-6.H:Y8
91%279-6.H:Y8
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I hope this is helpful.

1) Assign directly to a variable without using $1. The list on the left can be expanded, especially useful when there is $2,$3, etc. I prefer to get a meaningful name ASAP.

my ($first) = string =~ /some regex with capture/;
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2) Often the //= operator is useful:

$first //= '';
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You are trying to find '\w+\-\$\.\%' pattern with (\w+\-\$\.\%) group and it does not exist so $1 is undefined and u get an error. Try this.

my $string="{'totalResultsCount':71-24,'securityList':[{'cusip':'91%27
+9-6.H:Y8','issueDate':'2016-06-02T00:00:00','securityType':'Bill'}";
# Patterns
# original (\w+\-\$\.\%)
# matach any pattern with these limits ([\w\-\$\.\%\:]+)
# anything but this ' ([^\']+)
# exact pattern (\d{2}\%\d{3}\-\d\.[A-Z]\:[A-Z]\d)
$string =~ /'cusip':'(\d{2}\%\d{3}\-\d\.[A-Z]\:[A-Z]\d)'/;
if (defined $1) {
print " first is : $1 \n\n";
}
else {
print " first is not defined\n\n";
}
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Updated: added some regex in code.

my $string = "{'totalResultsCount':71-24,'securityList':[{'cusip':'91%
+279-6.H:Y8','issueDate':'2016-06-02T00:00:00','securityType':'Bill'}"
+;

$string =~ /'cusip':'([\w\-\$\.\%\:]+)'/;

if ( defined $1 ) {
    $string = $1;
    print "first is : $string \n" for $string =~ s/\W//g;;
    } 
    else {
    print " first is not defined\n";
}
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C:\Users\james\Desktop\perlmonks>pm.pl
first is : 912796HY8
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EDIT:

shorter code:

my $string = "{'totalResultsCount':71-24,'securityList':[{'cusip':'91%
+279-6.H:Y8','issueDate':'2016-06-02T00:00:00','securityType':'Bill'}"
+;
$string =~ s/.*('cusip':'([\w\-\$\.\%\:]+)').*/$2/g;
print "first is : $string \n" for $string =~ s/\W+//g;
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C:\Users\james\Desktop\perlmonks>pm.pl
first is : 912796HY8
[download]

thanks to all it's working awesome once again thanks for your precious time to spend to my question