If you're sure that that is going to be your string every time, then something like this should work: 
$foo = "abchelloxyz";
$foo =~ s/abc([\w]+)xyz/$1/;

[download]

However, if your input is going to be different, i.e. use something other than (in my example) any alphanumeric character, then your regex is going to be slightly different too.

Posting some sample data would help in building up a regex for you.

- wil

In reply to (wil) Re: regex: extract a substring by wil
in thread regex: extract a substring by Galen

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