in reply to extracting data from a file

You could just capture stretches of non-quote characters that are between quotes:
#!/usr/bin/env perl use strict; use warnings; use feature 'say'; my $string = q("qazwsx" "edcrfv" "tgbyhn"); my @array = $string =~ /"([^"]*)"/g; say $_ for @array; __END__ qazwsx edcrfv tgbyhn