You can use a reference, place parens around the part you want, and use $1 to access that part of the regex. If you have more then one set of parens, you would use $2 to access the second one, $3 to access the third, etc. 
if (/\b(API|APIN|UWI)\s*\./) { somesub($1); }

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In reply to Re: Quick question on matching by c-era
in thread Quick question on matching by licking9Volts

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