in reply to Replace only selected characters

You describe replacing only the first comma, but then expect exactly the opposite: "ABC,XYZ PERL IS AWESOME INNIT". It seems you want to remove all commas except for the first.

Try this. It "looks behind" for a comma, without consuming it; then matches (and stores) up to a comma; then replaces; and repeats. 

s/(?<=,)([^,]*),/\1/g;

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Re^2: Replace only selected characters
by rohanan (Novice) on Oct 14, 2011 at 18:58 UTC
    That worked!. Thanks for the solution. I learned something today :)
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Re^2: Replace only selected characters
by rohanan (Novice) on Oct 14, 2011 at 21:41 UTC
    Hi, Im struggling to Use this against a csv file with several lines of lines like this which needs formatting. 
    open(FILE, "<ABC.csv");
@lines = <FILE>;
print @lines;
print $lines[1];
close(FILE);
foreach ($lines) {
    $lines = ~ s/(?<=,)([^,]*),/\1/g;
    print("$lines \n");
}

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    what am I doing wrong now :(
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[d/l]
      foreach ($lines) {
    $lines = ~ s/(?<=,)([^,]*),/\1/g;
    print("$lines \n");
}

      [download]

      In addition to the fact that the scalar  $linesdoesn't appear to be defined anywhere (you are using warnings and strictures, aren't you?), the statement
          $lines = ~ s/(?<=,)([^,]*),/\1/g;
      should probably be
          $lines =~ s/(?<=,)([^,]*),/$1 /g;
      (the  =~ operator should have no space between = and ~, use  $1 instead of  \1 in the replacement string, there should actually be a space somewhere in the replacement string if you want to replace a ',' with a space). I would suggest something like (untested): 

      foreach my $line (@lines) {
    $line =~ s/(?<=,)([^,]*),/$1 /g;
    print("$line \n");
    }

      [download]

      Update: After further inspection of the OP and replies, it appears that rohanan wants every ',' after the first replaced with the empty string rather than with a space. So (still untested):
          $line =~ s/(?<=,)([^,]*),/$1/g;

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]

      Hi,

      'foreach ($lines) {' -
      should this be 'foreach (@lines) {' ?

      And so on

      J.C.

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