use v5.38; my $input = <<"ENDL"; /a/b/c/d /a/b/cd /a/b/cc /a/b/c/d/e ENDL sub proc($input) { my @line = split("\n", $input); my $prefix = $line[0]; my $cnt = 0; do { $cnt = 0; $prefix = substr $prefix, 0, rindex($prefix, "/"); for my $i (0 .. $#line) { if ($line[$i] !~ /^$prefix\//) { $cnt++; } } } while($cnt > 0); return $prefix; } say proc($input);