Thank you. This is great. Thanks a lot for breaking down that cryptic regex as well. I did try and test this, but had some issues with: 
    # do extra check that $school is acceptable
    $school //= 'null'; # regex gives undef if not found

[download]
Error msg:

Search pattern not terminated

I commented that out and it run, although it had these errors: 

match: /home/test/abc/.date_run_dir
    type: abc
Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at ./test7.p
+l line 31, <$_[...]> line 1.
    school: 
match: /home/test/def/.date_run_dir
    type: def
Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at ./test7.p
+l line 31, <$_[...]> line 2.
    school:

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Also would you pls show me to extract values from the files I match? Can I do this in the same pass that I peform the regex? Example values from file (.date_run_dir, etc) 

$ cat .date_run_dir .date_file_sent.*
/project/school/data/feed_abc_2010120816.ext3
mail_abc.dat.2010120816.ext3
mail_abc.dat.2010120816.ext3

[download]

In reply to Re^2: Help constructing proper regex to extract values from filenames and concurrently opening those same files to access records by JaeDre619
in thread Help constructing proper regex to extract values from filenames and concurrently opening those same files to access records by JaeDre619

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