I'm having coders block and can't figure this out. I have a list of names where sometimes the last initial is there with our without a period. How do I create a reg ex to split out the first name. The initial is always 1 letter with our without a period. All I want are the first names. 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use Data::Dumper;

my @names = [ "Mark K.", "Bob H", "Kurt", "Mary Kay K",
"Mary Jo Z.",  "Mary Jo" ];

foreach my $name ( @names ) {

  my $f_name = $name =~ m/(.*)[a-zA-Z]/;
  print "$f_name \n";

}


#  @names with only first names would look like:
# my @names = [ "Mark", "Bob", "Kurt", "Mary Kay", 
"Mary Jo",  "Mary Jo" ];

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In reply to Parsing out first names by Anonymous Monk

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