I don't know exactly what you're trying to do, but substr will get you there. If you really don't care what's in it, 

my $match = substr $string, 0, 30;

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extracts the first thirty characters.

If you need some real matching, an expression like 

substr($string, 0, 30) =~ /$re/

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works fine. substr is an lvalue function, so that even works for substitution.

After Compline,
Zaxo

In reply to Re: matching a defined lenght by Zaxo
in thread matching a defined lenght by harryC

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