Eh, why the (.*) and the $1? No need to say "replace the first character and the rest by the rest". "replace the first character by nothing" is far more efficient. And we can do so in two ways:

    $ID =~ s/.//s;   # No s modifier needed if the first char won't be
+ a newline
[download]

or

    substr ($ID, 0, 1) = "";  # Or substr $ID, 0, 1, "";
[download]

Of course, there are sillier ways:

    $ID = reverse $ID;
    chop $ID;
    $ID = reverse $ID;
[download]

or

    $ID =~ /./s;
    $ID = $';
[download]

-- Abigail