I agree with jethro: code tags would help.
One thing I do not understand is that it looks as if you are looping through the file, but match against a constant $string.
Also you should be using
use strict;
use warnings;
in your code, especially if you're just starting with perl. They do help a lot.
In your code there is one thing (if I read it right): Your variable $string starts with an opening parenthesis, but you anchor your match to start without it.
You also have additional blanks around your \s+ matches. You would require 3 blanks to match: one literal one, then one from \s+ and then another literal one. In your string you only have one.
So either change (added quotes around the $string assignment, updated m//) code to
# string to be searched
my $string = '(FT CDS complement(join(18028..18116,19351..20668)))';
#search for the first line highlighted in bold
if ($string =~ m/^\(FT\s+CDS\s+complement\(join\([0-9.,]+\)\)\)$/) {
print 'match'
} else {
print 'no match'
}
or get rid of the outermost pair of parenthesis.
cheers, si_lence |