Dear monks,

I have to take the first 2 columns out from a line(using regular expression). For that I have written a code like follows,

use strict;
use warnings;

$lines = 'B6y green $1$Byf3501d$dPtaW2vCbq63sdsw';

$lines =~ s/^(\S+\s\S+)/$1/;
print "$lines";

[download]

But, its matching the whole line. why?

When I have changed the regex as follows, its working fine. How both differs. Why the first one doesn't work?

$lines =~ s/^(\S+\s\S+).*/$1/;

In reply to How regex works here? by nagalenoj

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