Have you looked at perlre? It documents how you can match more than one character in a place when using regular expressions.

Is this you are expecting?
Example.


 my $data=<STDIN>;
        if($data =~ /ipw\.r[^a-p][a-z]*/)
        {
                print "Match\n";
        }
        else
        {
                print "Not Match\n";
        }
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OutPut


ipw.raasdfdsf
Not Match
ipw.raasdfdsf
Not Match
ipw.rgdfgsdfsd
Not Match
ipw.rrwgorga
Match
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The following simple regular expression solves your homework-assignment.

if ($name =~ s/^r.wpi//i) { print ("$name fits\n"); }
else                      { print ("$name does not fit\n"); }
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But it requires the following code before to make it work:

my $name = "ipw.raxwgorga";

if ((substr($name, 0,5) eq "ipw.r") && ( (sort (split(undef, substr($n
+ame, 5, length($name) - 5))))[0] eq substr($name, 5,1)))
{
    $name = "r.wpi".$name;
};
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Btw.: I agree to you that thinking on your own is an overrated concept; however I recommend you to use this service next time.