Read the Perl perlretut, especially the part on character classes. You probably want a common class like \w.

Your first regexp matches everything up until the second one matches.

It's a good use of your time to stop what you are doing, take 30 minutes, and read and understand the tutorial !

Update: links to docs

The way forward always starts with a minimal test.

In reply to Re: need help with explaining the output by 1nickt
in thread need help with explaining the output by perlynewby

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