I knew there was a better way. Here's a general function for splitting the first n characters of a string into an array, trapping to make sure they are digits:

my @field;

# Set to desired number of chars or switch for next line
# if you want the whole string.
my $numchars = 2;
# my $numchars = length($text);

for(my $i = 0; $i < $numchars; $i++) {
 my $curchar = substr($text, $i, 1);
 if ($curchar =~ /\d/) {
  push @field, $curchar;
 }
}
[download]

Also, substr($text, 1,2); should be substr($text, 1,1); in the above.

--
Grant me the wisdom to shut my mouth when I don't know what I'm talking about.