The regex /^\W^-/ will never match anything, because ^ only matches the beginning of a string, and you have a character (\W) before the second ^.

I think that what you want is this: 

s/[^\w-]+//g

[download]
That will strip out all characters that are neither \w nor a dash.
--Stevie-O 
$"=$,,$_=q>|\p4<6 8p<M/_|<('=>
.q>.<4-KI<l|2$<6%s!<qn#F<>;$,
.=pack'N*',"@{[unpack'C*',$_]
}"for split/</;$_=$,,y[A-Z a-z]
         {}cd;print lc

[download]

In reply to Re: Regex question : How to match \w and just the dash by Stevie-O
in thread Regex question : How to match \w and just the dash by hmbscully

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