in reply to another tricky one from lol

I'm not sure exactly what your doing, but could you just use substr? I wrote a small sample below that outputs "pre XXXXXXX post" 
$string = "pre replace post";
$i = 4;
$j = 11;
$length = $j - $i;
$result = substr($string,0,$i) . "x" x $length . substr($string,$j);
print "$result\n";

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Re: another tricky one from lol
by sfink (Deacon) on Apr 19, 2002 at 20:41 UTC
    substr is lvaluable: 
    $string = "pre replace post";
$i = 4;
$j = 11;
$length = $j - $i;
substr($string, $i, $length) = "x" x $length;
print "$string\n";

    [download]
    Or to avoid using $length twice: 
    $string = "pre replace post";
$i = 4;
$j = 11;
substr($string, $i, $j - $i) =~ tr/x/x/c;
print "$string\n";

    [download]
    But that's probably gratuitous obfuscation.
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