in reply to Cleaning Data Between Specified Columns

You can use the fact that the return value from substr() is an lvalue and do something like: 

{
  local *tmp = \substr( $source, $start, $len );
  $tmp =~ y/'//d;
  $tmp =~ y/a-zA-Z0-9\n\|-/ /c;
}

[download]

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: Cleaning Data Between Specified Columns
by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Jan 28, 2003 at 01:51 UTC
    Damn. That's great. :) And with a little change it's strict compliant and shorter too: 
    {
    local *_ = \substr $source, $start, $len;
     y/a-zA-Z0-9\n\|-/ /c;
     y/'//d;
}

    [download]
    Update: changed order of transliterations to account for the deletion of characters causing extra characters to shift in.

    Makeshifts last the longest.

[reply]
[d/l]

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom