You're being too specific. Your goal is simply to get the last thing between two slashes.

my ($dir) = m{/([^/]+)/[^/]*$};

Notice I changed the regexp's delimiters so I didn't have to escape the slashes.

I removed the if. That will set $dir to undef on failure. Add the if back if you want to keep $dir's previous value on failure.

Technically, you could omit the leading slash from the regexp, but I think it'll be more efficient with it.

Update: Since you mentioned you wanted to study my regexp further, what follows might help. Read from the comments from the bottom up.

my ($dir) = m{ / # Preceeded by a slash. ([^/]+) # Preceeded by non-slashes, the dir. Captured. / # Preceeded by a slash. [^/]* # Preceeded by non-slashes, the file name. $ # End of string. }x;

Update: Oops! I forgot the parens around $dir. Added.


In reply to Re: Regex question by ikegami
in thread Regex question by cajun

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