# let's define a sub that will return the matched id IF there was a match, undef else sub match_id { my $str = shift; if ($str =~ m{dp/(.\d+?)\z}) { # we assume our id is "some character followed by digits" return "$1\n"; # will return id IF we had a match } return; # undefined if there was no match } # assume you have these strings one in a line - or not # and read the file to a list (one line = one list element) # then you can get a list of matches like so: my @ids = grep { defined $_ } map { match_id($_) } @lines_from_file;