Hello Everyone, Thank you for your help. I think I found a solution. It may not be as pretty as the ones supplied (I am still researching what those special characters mean) but I think it will work. If anyone see's a flaw in this code, please let me know as I will be implementing into my production environment very soon. Thanks, Jaime

#my $hostname = 'name.ms.com';

my $hostname = 'name';

print $hostname;

if ($hostname =~ /\.ms.com$/) {

print "\nthis is true";

@nameparts = split(/\./,$hostname);

print "\n";

print $nameparts[0];

print "\n";

print $nameparts1;

print "\n";

print $nameparts2;

$firstpart = $nameparts[0];

print "\n";

print $firstpart;

}

else {

print "\nthis is false";

}