Take a look in perlre. \D is the non-digit class, but maybe that isn't what you want. You'd better look up which control chars you can encounter there and use an custom class. Something like:

s/^[\001-\017\s]{0,2}//;  # char 0 to 15 (and whitespace)
[download]

While we're at it, why not simplify it to a one-liner?

perl -pe 's/^[\001-\017\s]{0,2}//' infile.txt >outfile.txt
[download]

See perlrun for nifty options... the 'i' is also very useful.

Cheers,

Jeroen
"We are not alone"(FZ)

Update Listen to blackmateria. Of course you use the :cntrl: POSIX class.. much more convenient.

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.