I think the syntax ($match) = $var =~ /regex/;

is a concise and flexible way to extract parts of a string. The following code should illustrate this nicely - note especially the usage with the /g modifier.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
 
$_ = q/one two three four five/;
 
my ($match, @matches);
($match) = /\w+\W+(\w+)/;
print $match, "\n";
# prints two
 
@matches = /(\w+)\W+(\w+)/;
print join('|', @matches), "\n";
# prints one|two
 
@matches = /(\w+)\W+(\w+)/g;
print join('|', @matches), "\n";
# prints one|two|three|four
 
@matches = /(\w+)/g;
print join('|', @matches), "\n";
# prints one|two|three|four|five
[download]

-- Hofmator