Sorry to say, I'm having a hard time understanding what it is you are doing, but if you want to store that first word:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my $temp = "Firstword and then the rest of the string";

$temp =~ /^(\w+)/i;

my $firstword = $1;
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BTW, it's more efficient to use groups--the stuff in parens--in your reg exp instead of $`,$&,$'. So:

my $temp = "Firstword and then the rest of the string";

$temp =~ /^(\w+)([ \w]*)/i;

my $firstword = $1;
my $restofstring = $2;
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Anyone else?