asmith9983gmailcom following perl oneliner need perl n e s8812print first set parentheses strips first 8 characters second set strips everything 9th character lost test line echo 1212121290echo abcdefghijklperl n e s8812print two echo statements parentheses keep within subshell im assuming along running nix type system andrew edinburghscotland tue 5 aug 2008 chris charley wrote original message chris charley sent tuesday august 05 2008 1045 pm subject question text operation using regex original message remy guo newsgroups perlbeginners perl beginners sent tuesday august 05 2008 1014 pm subject question text operation using regex hi txt log file want delete 9th character line using regexthanks remy ooops sent poster mistake could command line perl pe 8 length substr _8 1 logfiletxt altered_filetxt chris clarify substr function following 1 2 single quotes assigns empty dtring 9th position string effectively eliminating 9th character chris unsubscribe email beginnersunsubscribeperlorg additional commands email beginnershelpperlorg httplearnperlorg wed 06 aug 2008 053127 0100 question text operation using regex