#!/usr/bin/perl use warnings; use strict; use Data::Dumper; my $array_ref = [qw/one two three four/]; $array_ref->[1] =~ s/w//g; print Dumper($array_ref); #### #!/usr/bin/perl use warnings; use strict; use Data::Dumper; sub foo { my $array_ref = ["foo" , "enum('bar,baz')"]; if($array_ref->[1] =~ /enum\('(.*?)'\)/) { return split ",", $1; } } print Dumper(foo());