in reply to Help with substitution

Using regex is kinda like hiring a bulldozer to move a couple shovels-full of dirt. Removing simple, constant strings is a perfect job for index and  substr.

use strict; my $string="Referring Hospital Triage Time <183> 2 h (N <26> 191)"; my $pre_str="Referring Hospital"; my $index = index $string, $pre_str; die( "prefix '$pre_str' not present in string '$string'." ) unless $index >= 0; my $len = length $pre_str; my $copy = $string; substr $copy, $index, $len, ''; print <<"EOMSG"; Deleting $len characters starting at postion $index of the string $string leaves $copy EOMSG

gemerates the output

Deleting 18 characters starting at postion 0 of the string Referring Hospital Triage Time <183> 2 h (N <26> 191) leaves Triage Time <183> 2 h (N <26> 191)

So what do you want to do about that space that isn't part of your prefix string?

As Occam said: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.