There are three approaches I can think of that would solve your issue, and only one is a regex.

1. The regex solution:

   $xpath =~ s{/[^/]+$}{};
   [download]

2. The split solution:

   my @temp = split('/', $xpath);
   $xpath = join('/',@temp[0..$#temp-1]);
   [download]

3. The rindex solution:

   $xpath = substr($xpath,0,rindex($xpath,'/'));
   [download]

The last one (rindex) strikes me as the most efficent way to go, but I haven't Benchmarked it.