in reply to Check if a variable contains only one letter?

As evidenced by the varied responses from the other monks, your problem statement is somewhat unclear.

Perhaps this is what you're looking for?

#!/usr/bin/env perl use warnings; use strict; while (my $myvar=<DATA>) { chomp($myvar); if ($myvar=~/^([A-Z])\1*$/) { print "'$myvar' matches\n"; } else { print "'$myvar' doesn't match\n"; } } __DATA__ X XXXX XXXY XXYX YXXX AAAA BBBB BBBC DDD4

Output:

'X' matches 'XXXX' matches 'XXXY' doesn't match 'XXYX' doesn't match 'YXXX' doesn't match 'AAAA' matches 'BBBB' matches 'BBBC' doesn't match 'DDD4' doesn't match