Simplest answers are the best =] working with CSV values would be good, my problem was the annoying single quotes ' ' and this little code took care of it for me:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $sometext = 'somefile.txt';

open(SOME, $sometext);

while(<SOME>) {

    chomp;
    
    $a = $_;

    $a =~ s/'//g;
    
    print $a; }
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Please don't use $a or $b as variable names -- NOT EVEN IN EXAMPLES; they have specialized behaviors for use when sorting... and they don't provide any indication of their content. Some short (1 letter) possibilities: $s (for "string"); $l for line; etc. etc.

P.S: syntacticly trivial, but annoying: You changed the character you wanted removed from a comma in your OP to a single quote in your 'simplest answer.' Perhaps one was a typo, and in this thread, probably just set off my pre-coffee compulsiveness/ill-humor/whatever... but like $a, it sets a bad example for future readers.

If I've misconstrued your question or the logic needed to answer it, I offer my apologies to all those electrons which were inconvenienced by the creation of this post.