I can't see why you didn't get the error "Modification of a read-only value attempted" when you tried to substitute using $1. Variables like that are only used for reading the results of a match, and they only work if capturing parentheses are used. For example: 
  if($line =~ /(test)/) {
     print $1,"\n";
  }

[download]
That would print a line saying "test" for each line containing the string "test"

It's not clear from your post what you mean by "just what I'm trying to get." Would you please clarify what you are trying to do?

In reply to Re: =~ and substitutions by tall_man
in thread =~ and substitutions by sulfericacid

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