perl -pe 's/^\[//; s/\]$//' < hall

##</code><code>##

while (<>) {

##</code><code>##

    print;
}

##</code><code>##

#!/path/to/perl
# (usually, on *nix, the path is /usr/bin/perl)

while (<>) {
    s/^\[//;  # note that the "[" and
    s/\]$//;  #  the "]" need to be preceded by backslash
    print;
}

##</code><code>##

while (<>) {
    chomp;
    print substr( $_, 1, length() - 2 ), $/;
}