my $productcode = "FCLA";

if ($productcode =~ m/(FCL)/){
    print "$1\n";
} else {
    print "No FCL in product code!\n";
}
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Or simply: $productcode = 'FCL' if $productcode =~ m/FCL/;

my $productcode = "FCLA";

    if($productcode =~ /^FCL/){
        $productcode = "FCL";
    }
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What's wrong with a conditional statement? And what should happen to $productcode if it doesn'T start witch FCL?

You can do something like this:

$productcode = $productcode =~ m/^FCL/ ? : 'FCL' : "No, sorry";
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But that only hides the conditional in the ternary operator. And you can use parenthesis in the regex and access the matched value with $1, but you still need a conditional somewhere to check its value.

Use substitute

my $productcode = "FCLA";

$productcode =~ s/.*FCL.*/FCL/;

print $producecode
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The only problem would be if what adrive wanted was to print out the original string (e.g., FCLA, FCLXXX, etc.) if it contains the user-specified substring (e.g., FCL).

The solution with substitution would destroy the original string so that what would be printed would just be the sought-after substring.

Of course maybe that what was wanted...I couldn't tell from the original qustion.

ack Albuquerque, NM

thanks guys :) that'll do