Another approach (using a regex, and assuming you want to keep the whitespace):

#! perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my $string = <<END;
> abcd1234
abcd abcd 
>xyz123 
xyz
END

if ($string =~ />(.*?)\n(.*?)>/s)
{
    print "First  substring is '$1'\n";
    print "Second substring is '$2'\n";
}

[download]

Output:

 0:23 >perl 497_SoPW.pl
First  substring is ' abcd1234'
Second substring is 'abcd abcd
'

 0:23 >

[download]

Hope that helps,

Athanasius <°(((>< contra mundum Iustus alius egestas vitae, eros Piratica,

In reply to Re: Separating substrings from a main string by Athanasius
in thread Separating substrings from a main string by newbie1991

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