Actually, a dot star can be quite useful, and is considerably faster than using the non-greedy version. In this example, using dot star makes it easy, e.g., 
/^.*\\(.*)/

[download]
That will extract all the information after the last \. Using the .*? version it would have to be:
/.*?\\(?!.*\\)$/

[download]
This would aslo make it a lot slower.

However, trying to find the last \, like in this example, could probably be made simpler by a call to reverse. Though, in the example of extracting a filename, definately you should use a module like File::Basename, as aforementioned. This way it will be portable accross systems, and it is tested for errors, so it will save you valuable time trying to fix a regex that has something wrong with it(and errors always slip in, as do special cases).

In reply to Re: Re: Extracting file name from path by dimmesdale
in thread Extracting file name from path by HTTP-404

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.