#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; my $string = 'One bright day in the middle of The Night'; my (%seen, $new_string); for my $char ( split // , $string ) { $char = lc $char; next if $seen{$char} || $char !~ /^[a-z]$/; $seen{$char}++; $new_string .= $char; last if length $new_string == 26; } print "$new_string\n";