use strict; use warnings; my @dirs; while () { chomp; push @dirs, $_; } my %parents; for my $dir1 (@dirs) { for my $dir (@dirs) { if (index($dir1, $dir) == 0) { # $dir1 is a substring of $dir, starting at pos 0 $parents{$dir}++; } } } for (keys %parents) { print "$_\n" if $parents{$_} == 1 } __DATA__ /tmp/a /tmp/a/b /tmp/a/b/c /tmp/a/b/c/e /tmp/a/b/d /tmp/a/b/d/g /tmp/a/b/d/g/h /tmp/a/b/d/g/i /tmp/a/b/k