note McDarren <code> my $string = '~/tmp/hfj/abc/bhd/5009.xmlreal.xml'; $string =~ s/^.*\/\d+//; print "$string\n"; </code> <p>Another way is to use [mod://File::Basename] to extract the file name, and then remove the bits you don't want. <code> use File::Basename; $string = '~/tmp/hfj/abc/bhd/5009.xmlreal.xml'; my ($filename, $directories, $suffix) = fileparse($string); $filename =~ s/^\d+//; print "$filename\n"; </code> <p>Cheers,<br> Darren 825731 825731