If you are manipulating filesystem paths, use the Path::Class::Dir module and its dir_list method.

If you are manipulating URIs, use the URI module and its path_segments method.

If it is neither, simply use a regular expression that captures everything up to the last /.

    'some/very/varied_length/string' =~ m|(.*/)|
    # expression returns ('some/very/varied_length/')
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