I have a series of words followed by a pre-determined marker (say the letter x in this case) contained in a string.

$contents = 'test1x     test!x     test2x';

There is a need to extract a list of those words that contain only alphanumeric characters plus the marker, ‘x’. So obviously “test!x” not wanted.

If I run the following regex:

@filtered_list =
(
  $contents =~  /(?:[\w]+) /g
);

Then I get the following list returned:

("test1x", "x", "test2x")

as opposed to a required list of

("test1x", "test2x")

The problem is with the 2nd item – it fails on the character “!” and just moves on to the next character when I really want to just stop right there and not return anything for this word.

I know I am just not seeing something completely obvious…

Thank you.

You nearly got it right. I tested this line:

@results=$contents=~/(\w+x)/g;

This returns a list of one or more alphanumeric characters, ([a-Z0-9_],) followed by the ‘x’ character. You forgot to add the explicit ‘x’.