Hi,
I'm not sure I really understood what you want, but how about this:

my $pwd = `pwd`;
print $pwd;
my ($parent_dir) = $pwd =~ m|^(.*)/[^/]+.*$|g;
print $parent_dir;
[download]

prints:

/home/myself/develop/0_test
/home/myself/develop
[download]

cheers,
svenXY