Maybe just read perlre on how to construct character classes other than \w.

Also, $1 will only have a value if the match was successful, so the correct idiom to use is:

if( $string =~ /.../ ) {
    print " first is : $1\n\n";
} else {
    print "Nothing found in <<$string>>\n";
};

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In reply to Re: Regular Expression on special character and alphanumeric values by Corion
in thread Regular Expression on special character and alphanumeric values by perlmad

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