in reply to exact word match

As another idea, I don't see the need to do this all in one regex. You have an explicit list of forbidden names, I would make an array(or hash) of those names and put that in a prominent place - not embedded in a tricky regex later in the code. Below I used a hash look-up for an exact match, but the forbidden table could also a list of patterns if it was necessary to get that complicated.

There is nothing wrong with having a number of little regexes as you continue to valid the user's input. With code written like this, reading the user error messages gives a clear picture of what is and what is not allowed without having to use brain cells thinking about the regex albiet as simple as they are below.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; my @forbidden = qw ( master model dbccdb sybsecurity sybsystemdb sybsystemprocs tempdb DBA ); my %forbidden = map{lc $_ => 1}@forbidden; # or could just build the hash manually while ( (print "Enter DB name: "), (my $name = <STDIN>) !~ /^\s*q(uit)?\s*$/i ) { $name =~ s/^\s+//; $name =~ s/\s+$//; #also does chomp next if ($name =~ /^\s*$/); #simple re-prompt if blank line if ($name =~ / /) { print "Error no spaces within name allowed!\n"; next; } if ( $forbidden{lc $name} ) { print "Error: $name is a reserved name!\n"; next; } if ( $name =~ /\W/) # only a-zA-Z0-9_ allowed { print "Error: illegal character in name!\n"; next; } #... perhaps more tests on the input name? print "Ok, $name is valid\n"; }