in reply to Slurping file using regular expressions for array or variables

You failed to close your code tags. This has caused some rather dramatic mangling. Please correct this, and wrap your input in code tags as well, since white space gets mangled in HTML. See How do I post a question effectively?.

Your MAC address code should read 

/([\dA-Fa-f]{2}:[\dA-Fa-f]{2}:[\dA-Fa-f]{2}:[\dA-Fa-f]{2}:[\dA-Fa-f]{2
+}:[\dA-Fa-f]{2})/g);

[download]
or more concisely, 
/([\dA-F]{2}(?::[\dA-F]{2}){5})/ig);

[download]
The code you posted (I think) was looking for literal '2's instead of a count ({2}). See Quantifiers in perlre.

#11929 First ask yourself `How would I do this without a computer?' Then have the computer do it the same way.

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom