Im picking up a project from where another employee left off, and not knowing perl all that well it was a disadvantage that he was a sloppy coder and didnt comment a line of his code. I am trying to finish up a program that will redirect users to a page if the one they are looking for isnt available. But i have a few questions. 
 if ($Path =~ m{^(.*)\/([^\/]*)})
    {
        $Dir = $1;
    $File = $2;
    $Ext=$3;
    }
    else
    {
        $File = $Path;
    }

    if ($File =~ m{^(.*)\.([^\.]*)})
    {
        $File = $1;
    $Dot = ".";
    $Ext = $2;
    }
    else
    {
        $Dot = "";
    $Ext = "";
    }
    if (-d "/$Dir/$File")
    {
        $Dir .= "/$File";
        $File = "";
    }

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I cant understand exactly what the first 2 statements do, ive been told the first statement will match anything, because its using the .* operator, but i dont know. If anyone would be so kind as to tell me what the first to pattern matching strings are looking for, i think that would lessen my headache and my extreme hatred for this old programmer!

In reply to Perl string matching by wizard341

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