A selection of more or less useful ways of doing it.

  $newno = substr($no,0,2);

  $no =~ /^(\d\d)/ && $newno = $1;

  $newno = join '', unpack("AA", $no);

  $newno = join '', (split //, $no)[0,1];

  $newno = int($no / (10 ** (length($no) -2)));

  etc ...
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/J\

If You just want the first two characters in a string (numbers are sort of strings in perl, the distinction is kind of fuzzy), you can use this:

my $newno = substr($no, 0, 2);
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See: substr

I hope this is what you wanted. If not let me know, and I'll try to help.

Use ^ to start from beginning of the line.

$no = '77373737377837';
$newno = $1 if $no=~m#^([0-9]{2})#;

print "\n$newno";
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#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my $var        = '77373737377837';

my @new_var    = $var =~ /((\d)$1)/;
my $var2       = join('', @new_var);
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That's wrong. If you run the program, and ignore the warnings it issues, you'll see that $var2 ends up being 77. But it's not the first two numbers - it's the first number repeated twice. (Test it by setting $var to '7').

The problem is your incorrect usage of $1, which is undefined (Correct would be \1). Since $1 is undefined, the regex becomes /((\d))/, putting the first number in both $1 and $2.