substr

substr

substr EXPR,OFFSET,LENGTH,REPLACEMENT

substr EXPR,OFFSET,LENGTH

substr EXPR,OFFSET

Extracts a substring out of EXPR and returns it. First character is at offset zero. If OFFSET is negative, starts that far back from the end of the string. If LENGTH is omitted, returns everything through the end of the string. If LENGTH is negative, leaves that many characters off the end of the string.

my $s = "The black cat climbed the green tree";
my $color  = substr $s, 4, 5;      # black
my $middle = substr $s, 4, -11;    # black cat climbed the
my $end    = substr $s, 14;        # climbed the green tree
my $tail   = substr $s, -4;        # tree
my $z      = substr $s, -4, 2;     # tr

You can use the substr() function as an lvalue, in which case EXPR must itself be an lv