I'm trying to do a replace by character on positions 12 and 13 of a flat file. These positions consistently are populated with "DC" and need to be replaces with two spaces. I don't want to do a global search and replace because there could be DC's elsewhere in the file that should not be replaced. My script is removing the DC's correctly; however, I appear to be losing 10 spaces in the new flat file as a result. This file is going to be used to upload into a database so the character positioning is vital. Any advice on where I'm going wrong? Here's my script: 
#!/usr/bin/perl

$upload="<upload dir>";
$output="<output dir>";
$inputFile="$upload/inputFile.txt";

$filename="$upload/file.txt.mrk";
$outFile="$output/test.tmp";

open(MYINPUTFILE, "<$filename"); # open for input
open(MYOUTPUTFILE, ">>$outFile");
my(@lines) = <MYINPUTFILE>;
my($line);
 foreach $line (@lines)
 {
 print $line;
 substr($line,11,13)="  ";
 print MYOUTPUTFILE "$line";
 }
close(MYINPUTFILE);
close(MYOUTPUTFILE);

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In reply to Search/Replace Character by rhiannasilel

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