use strict;
my $str = ' 9.1 The Euclidean Group in Two-Dimensional 152
Space E2
CHAPTER 10: THE LORENTZ AND POINCARÉ GROUPS,
AND SPACE-TIME SYMMETRIES 173
';
my $regex = qr/(\S)\t[0-9]*\R\t+/p;
my $subst = '$1';
my $result = $str =~ s/$regex/$subst/rg;
print "The result of the substitution is' $result\n";
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for Perl, please visit: http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html