http://qs1969.pair.com?node_id=361063

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23 Feb 2013

I've got a file with a bunch of lines that look like so:

Honda   CB1000  1995    26      47      15      99-3520-5       30      55      17      99-3519-5

and some lines that look like:

Yamaha  YZF-R1 Limited edition  2006    30      47      12      99-3540-5       30      55      17      99-3519-5

I'm trying to grab everything up to and including the year.
Thus far I have
cat triple_swap_bearings.txt | perl -ne 's/(^[^\s]*\s*[^\s]*\s*[\w\d\ +]*?(?=\d\d\d\d\s*\d\d\s*\d\d)\s*\d\d\d\d)\s*\d\d\s*\d\d.*$/\1/; print +;'

which fails on the lines that have the "extra stuff" after the model name, and before the year.

I suppose I don't need the [^\s]*\s*[^\s]*\s* though I was working on the "say what you really really mean in regex" principle there.

What I need to say in regex is "Match things which are not four digits followed by some amount of whitespace followed by two more digits".

Answer:
cat triple_swap_bearings.txt | perl -ne 's/(^[^\s]+\s*[^\s]+\s*[\w\d\ +\-\(\)\&\/]+?(?=\s+\d\d\d\d\s+\d\d\s+\d\d)\s+\d\d\d\d)\s+\d\d\s+\d\d. ++$/\1/; print;'

(Note the addition of \s+ inside the positive lookahead assertion.)

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Date Unknown:

if ($foo == 1) { my $bar; unless(($bar = $socket->read()) =~ /one/) { die $bar, $!; } $socket->write('foo'); unless(($bar = $socket->read()) =~ /two/) { die $bar, $!; } $socket->write('bar');
etc. vs:
if ($foo == 1) { unless((my $bar = $socket->read()) =~ /one/) { die $bar, $!; } $socket->write('foo'); unless((my $bar = $socket->read()) =~ /two/) { die $bar, $!; } $socket->write('bar');