2 basic questions

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello Monks,

I am pretty new to Perl. Kindly answer me if any of you can... :)

I have 2 questions today,

Question #1:

$check = "a";
$check++;
print $check;
exit;
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This will give me answer as "b", but what should i do to get "d" or "e" (I mean to pass over 3 or 4 alphabets).

Question #2:

I have a string which have 2 alphabets, I need to trim it to 1 alphabet, ie, I only want the right alphabet, the left one should be trimmed out.

Example

 $input= "ab";
 $output = "b";
[download]

The alphabets can be any, not just "ab", it can be "cd" or "sp", In that case output should be "d" & "p" resp.

Thank you, Monks.