Hello William, Perl is a programming language easy to use an relative easy to learn. But is very very tricky. The best way to learn is get a good book . Like 'Learning Perl' and read the book and practice. If you do not do that you will find a huge amount of special variables with stranges characters. Even google can't answer the meaning of these variables sometimes. So my more safety and sincere advice is to start with a book. If it is too much for you now. Then go for Perl tutorials in Perl documentation. Start with perl intro for example. !~ /\*/ !~ mean negation, opposite to =~ // Are the delimiter for regural espresion \ mean scape character. Here * has a meaning in regular expression world. So use \* meant use directly * character. All together. The if is true only if $extesinbdoes not contain *. Best Regards, Armando Pérez Peña ________________________________ De: William Torrez Corea <willitc9888@gmail.com> Enviado: miércoles, 3 de agosto de 2022 8:41 Para: beginners@perl.org <beginners@perl.org> Asunto: What is the mean of the following syntax? Mean: !~ /\*/ I have the following code: if ($extension !~ /\*/) { $backup = $ARGV . $extension; } -- With kindest regards, William. ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Debian - The universal operating system ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://www.debian.org ⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀Thread Previous | Thread Next