I was trying to clarify the confusion I had (that I just assumed that 'grep' works the same way 'split' does). My script now works with the
 'map {/re(gex)/; $1} @list'
or
 'map {/re(gex)/ ? $1 : (); } @list'
solution.
I will try the regex =~ thing also. This may be faster.
Thank you very much.