use strict;
my $str = 'APP00001Was APP00002TEST APP00003Blah blah APP00004 Apple APP11112OrANGE APP
';
my $regex = qr/\b(APP\d{1,5})\w*|\w+\s*/mp;
my $subst = '$1';
my $result = $str =~ s/$regex/$subst/rg;
print "The result of the substitution is' $result\n";
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for Perl, please visit: http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html