Please rewrite your code as a SSCCE and tell us what output you get and what output you want.

In your case, such a SSCCE could be:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my $localdir = '\\some\\example\\dir\\HD1FA9';
my $tcId;

if (($localdir =~ m/^[\w\W\s\S]+\\((H|HD)[0-9]{1,3}(FA|FC|C|P|CO)[0-9]
+{1,3})/i) or
    ($localdir =~ m/^[\w\W\s\S]+\\((FC|LM|CO)+[\w\W\s\S]+)/i)) {
    $tcId = $1;
} else {
    die "TC directory structure is not proper!";
}

print "Have TC id '$tcId'\n";
[download]

Note that under Linux, directory names are separated with the forward slash / not the backslash \.

We could help you if you post some data as to what you are looking for, and some sample directories you want matched.
Show both "match" and "not match" cases, along with what you are attempting to extract.

This means the line starts with one or more characters which are either a word character or not a word character or a space character or not a space character...

That is nonsense and matches anything.
Describe in words that you are trying to match.

Describe in words that you are trying to match.

Sometimes that can help; other times it just makes things worse.

How to ask better questions using Test::More and sample data is usually the winner.

---

🦛

Well one would hope that "in words" means showing some examples in order to fully describe what is supposed to happen. I really have no idea from the OP's current code this thing is supposed to do. I will add "show some actual examples of match and no match" in future such requests.

Test::More is fine, but something even easier could be fine too. The OP could get his point across by flushing this out with more examples...

use strict;
use warnings;

#wild ass guess
foreach (qw( /HD123FA45
             /HD123FA45/anything
             anything/HD123FA45
             /FC/blah
             /LM
             /H4p5 
             asdf/blah/x/H4p9 
             /asdf7758
             ))
{
   print "$_ ";

   if (/\/(H|HD)[0-9]{1,3}(FA|FC|C|P|CO)[0-9]{1,3}$/i or
       /\/(FC|LM|CO)/i)
   { print "\t...match!\n"}
   else {print "\t...no match!\n";}
}
__END__

/HD123FA45     ...match!
/HD123FA45/anything     ...no match!
anything/HD123FA45     ...match!
/FC/blah     ...match!
/LM     ...match!
/H4p5     ...match!
asdf/blah/x/H4p9     ...match!
/asdf7758     ...no match!
[download]

This is bizarre to me: m/^[\w\W\s\S]+...

This means the line starts with one or more characters which are either a word character or not a word character or a space character or not a space character...

No, that means the line starts with one or more of of \, w, W, s, S. Your description would be right if the code was m/^(\w|\W|\s|\S)+...

Update: The above is wrong. See below.

[...] in a regexp is for a character class. (...) is for grouping. See perlre.

Alexander

--
Today I will gladly share my knowledge and experience, for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so". ;-)

I am not sure about that.
It is perfectly allowed to use a character class Perl short-cut within brackets, [\d] means the same as [0-9]
[\w] would mean same as [a-zA-Z0-9_]


use strict;
use warnings;

my $x = 'a34x5';

my @y = $x =~ /([\d]+)/g;
my @z = $x =~ /([0-9]+)/g;
print "@y\n";  # 34 5  \d worked fine
print "@z\n";  # 34 5

my @b = $x =~ /([\d\w]+)/g;
print "@b\n"; # a34x5  \d irrelevant but \w works

my @c = $x =~ /([\w]+)/g;  #brackets not needed
print "@c\n";  #a34x5
my @d = $x =~ /(\w+)/g;
print "@d\n";  #a34x5
[download]

No matter what, the OP's code is bizarre.

Added: The idea of using an anchor to the beginning of the string, followed by any amount of random stuff, makes no sense to me. Better to leave that off entirely (don't put /^.*(match)/, just put /(match)/.

I think if you want \ in the character set, you have to escape it with another \