To use regular expressions to chop leading spaces, use the ^ anchor to specify 'start at the beginning'. Also, rather than the g modifier (since you really only need to substitute once), use + to indicate 'one or more'. I prefer the character class \s to an explicit space (' '), but YMMV. 
s/^\s+//

[download]
YAPE::Regex::Explain describes this as: 
The regular expression:

(?-imsx:^\s+)

matches as follows:
  
NODE                     EXPLANATION
----------------------------------------------------------------------
(?-imsx:                 group, but do not capture (case-sensitive)
                         (with ^ and $ matching normally) (with . not
                         matching \n) (matching whitespace and #
                         normally):
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  ^                        the beginning of the string
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  \s+                      whitespace (\n, \r, \t, \f, and " ") (1 or
                           more times (matching the most amount
                           possible))
----------------------------------------------------------------------
)                        end of grouping
----------------------------------------------------------------------

[download]
See Metacharacters and Quantifiers in perlre.

#11929 First ask yourself `How would I do this without a computer?' Then have the computer do it the same way.

In reply to Re: Manipulation of output of multiple parse line. by kennethk
in thread Manipulation of output of multiple parse line. by flynnbg

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