Of course if you have a manageable list of extensions, you could populate the suffix list and use File::Basename very easily. That is, the original post says "extension might not always be txt," but that doesn't indicate the scope of potential extensions. Maybe it's just txt, html, htm, pl and cgi (just a random group of extensions chosen). In which case I'd lean towards the File::Basename solution rather than creating a regex unique to this script.

Or maybe the AnonyMonk means to be able to remove any extension, in which case File::Basename isn't the best solution. Obviously the AnonyMonk will need to choose the best approach, but I wouldn't discount File::Basename for a limited number of extensions.