note wind The following will match two words in a row: <c> use strict; use warnings; my @strings = qw( /help/one/one/one/something_here /buy/cash/buy/water/water/water/nothing_here ); for (@strings) { if (m{\b(\w+)/\1\b}) { print "Dup is '$1'\n"; } } </c> 910068 910068