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The solution by roundel35 is indeed safest and securest if you wish to restrict everything to drive R:; it will fail if the drive letter changes. The minimal matching ensures the left-side anchoring and will get the top directory on a local drive or a network share.
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The solution by roundel35 is indeed safest and securest if you wish to restrict everything to drive R:; it will fail if the drive letter changes. The minimal matching ensures the left-side anchoring and will get the top directory on a local drive or a network share.

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I have a path variable. It always starts with R:\\ and is followed by one or more directories beneath. I need a regular expression that keeps the 1st folder and removes the drive ( R:\\ ) and anything that follows the first folder. So all that will be left is the first folder name. Have a couple examples below to make it clear what I'm wanting.<br />
<br />
<u>Example 1</u><br />
$file = R:\\SomeDirectory123\\BlaB<wbr />laBla\\Hel<wbr />lo123\\<br />
$folder =~ EXPRESSIONHERE that modifies $file;<br />
<br />
Value of $folder should be: SomeDirectory123<br />
<br />
<u>Example 2</u><br />
$file = R:\\SomeOtherDirectory321\<wbr />\<br />
$folder =~ EXPRESSIONHERE that modifies $file;<br />
<br />
Value of $folder should be: SomeOtherDirectory321
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I have a path variable. It always starts with R:\\ and is followed by one or more directories beneath. I need a regular expression that keeps the 1st folder and removes the drive ( R:\\ ) and anything that follows the first folder. So all that will be left is the first folder name. Have a couple examples below to make it clear what I'm wanting.

Example 1
$file = R:\\SomeDirectory123\\BlaBlaBla\\Hello123\\
$folder =~ EXPRESSIONHERE that modifies $file;

Value of $folder should be: SomeDirectory123

Example 2
$file = R:\\SomeOtherDirectory321\\
$folder =~ EXPRESSIONHERE that modifies $file;

Value of $folder should be: SomeOtherDirectory321

Perl Regular expression needed

A regular expression ("regex") is a sequence of characters that define a search pattern, mainly for use in pattern matching with strings, or string matching, i.e. "find and replace"-like operations. Regular expression processors are found in several search engines, search and replace dialogs of several word processors and text editors, and in the command lines of text processing utilities, such as sed and AWK. Many programming languages provide regular expression capabilities, some built-in, for example Perl, JavaScript, Ruby, AWK, and Tcl, and others via a standard library, for example .NET languages, Java, Python and C++ (since C++11). Most other languages offer regular expressions via a library.

Regular Expressions

Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages with over 25 years of development. Perl 5 runs on over 100 platforms from portables to mainframes and is suitable for both rapid prototyping and large-scale development projects.  Perl gained widespread popularity as a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripting language, in part due to its regular expression and string parsing abilities. In addition to CGI, Perl is used for graphics programming, system administration, network programming, finance, bioinformatics, and other applications.