Your regex, $value =~ /^.*\(.*)\)/; fails because you have an an unmatched closing parenthesis in the regex. Attempting to execute a short version of what may be your code,

my $value1 = "Total age recorded (TOTAGE)";
$value1 =~ /^.*\(.*)\)/;
print $value1 . "\n";
[download]

produces this:

Unmatched ) in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/^.*\(.*) <-- HERE \)/ at ....

In other words, the regex engine balks when it finds a special character, the closing paren, unescaped, when it did not find an opening paren.

When you receive a message of that sort, it's valuable to those who would assist you, so it is well to include it in your post.

However, dealing only with the unmatched paren doesn't give you what you sought.

So, extending/explaining sh1tn's correct answer of

s/.+?\((.+?)\).*/$1/;

• The .+? matches "anything, one or more times, UNTIL..." the regex engine finds a literal open parenthesis in $value.
• The inner parens in sh1tn's formulation capture their content, in this case, "anything inside an opening paren, one or more times, until the regex engine finds closing paren, thus capturing (preserving) only "TOTAGE" in $1.
• Since he recommended a substitution, rather than a simple match, the portion of his code following the middle "/" effectively discarding the original content of $value and replaces it (substitutes) what it captured in $1.

You'll find more in the tutorial section, under Tutorials#Pattern-Matching-and-Regular-Expressions and while you may find Friedl's "Mastering Regular Expressions" more than you seek right now, but it's well worth the study.

---

In reply to Re: data between brackets by ww
in thread data between brackets by Anonymous Monk

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