MidLifeXis already answered your question with 
   last if $char_read =~ /\s/;

[download]
but I thought I would add that since you're not familiar with regular expressions, you might find the excellent 'perldocs' documentation that's included with Perl helpful in learning about regular expressions and pattern matching.

Do 
   perldoc perl

[download]
at a command prompt, and you'll see all the different perldocs that come with perl. Listed there are these regular expression topics: 
           perlrequick         Perl regular expressions quick start
           perlretut           Perl regular expressions tutorial
           perlre              Perl regular expressions, the rest of t
+he story

[download]
So, then to read the perldocs on perlrequick, you would do 
   perldoc perlrequick

[download]
Hope this helps.

In reply to Re: Regex and loop question by hmerrill
in thread Regex and loop question by perl_seeker

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.