Find all strings containing "a" characters, that are not followed by "b" characters.

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

Hi everyone!

I'm learning perl using "Lama Book" and now I'm in the world of regexps. There's an exercise in d foy's book of exercises, which I still can't solve :(. Here it is:

"Write a program to match a string that contains an “a”, but doesn’t have a “b” anywhere after the “a” ".

I've written the following regexp, and is _seems_ to be proper (I've run some tests. I really does the job as far as I notice.), but in the answers section of this book there's a rather weired way to solve this exercise, which includes two "if" blocks.

Here is the regexp I've written: /\ba\b|(\b.*a[^b]+\b)/

Is it okay for this exercise, that's all I want to know :) . Thank you in advance.

Comment on Find all strings containing "a" characters, that are not followed by "b" characters. Download Code

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Re: Find all strings containing "a" characters, that are not followed by "b" characters. by bart (Canon) on Dec 12, 2012 at 17:59 UTC
Try `/a(?!b)/` [download] with negative lookahead. And yes, your regexp looks rather OK, except I would drop a few `\b` anchors: `/a\b\|a[^b]/` [download] or combined: `/a(\b\|[^b])/` [download] Will that do?	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Find all strings containing "a" characters, that are not followed by "b" characters. by Anonymous Monk on Dec 12, 2012 at 18:04 UTC
immediately after, and anywhere after, not the same :)	[reply]
Re: Find all strings containing "a" characters, that are not followed by "b" characters. by Anonymous Monk on Dec 12, 2012 at 17:59 UTC
No :) A string is not a word, a string is a string ... so all your \b is bogus simple solution `if( /a/ and not /a.*b/ ){ ... }`	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Find all strings containing "a" characters, that are not followed by "b" characters. by aitap (Curate) on Dec 12, 2012 at 18:03 UTC
~~It looks like you need a look-ahead assersion:~~ `$string = /a(?!b)/;` [download] EDIT: Well, I misread the question (paid too much attention to the title). A simple `/a/ and !/a.b/` (++1008541) or `/^[^a]a+[^b]*$/` should be enough. Sorry if my advice was wrong.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Find all strings containing "a" characters, that are not followed by "b" characters. by johngg (Canon) on Dec 12, 2012 at 23:39 UTC
A look-ahead is fine, you just have to insert `.` (zero or more of anything) before the "b" I think. `$ perl -E ' > say qq{$_ - @{ [ m{a(?!.b)} ? q{Match} : q{No match} ] }} for ( > q{Have you any fish}, > q{What a nice broom}, > q{Fishing for trout}, > );' Have you any fish - Match What a nice broom - No match Fishing for trout - No match $` [download] I hope this is of interest. Cheers, JohnGG	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Find all strings containing "a" characters, that are not followed by "b" characters. by Not_a_Number (Prior) on Dec 12, 2012 at 18:18 UTC
No :) See Re^2: Find all strings containing "a" characters, that are not followed by "b" characters. above.	[reply]
Re^3: Find all strings containing "a" characters, that are not followed by "b" characters. by Kyshtynbai (Sexton) on Dec 12, 2012 at 19:40 UTC
If only I'd knew that logic operators like "and" would work with regular expressions! In my Lama book (5th edition) it is written, that they actualy DO NOT work with regexps (or something has messed up in my head :). I'll check it tomorrow, now gonna sleep). Thank you everyone, guys!	[reply]
Re^4: Find all strings containing "a" characters, that are not followed by "b" characters. by Anonymous Monk on Dec 12, 2012 at 20:09 UTC
Re^2: Find all strings containing "a" characters, that are not followed by "b" characters. by Kyshtynbai (Sexton) on Dec 12, 2012 at 18:12 UTC
Thank you everyone!	[reply]
Re^3: Find all strings containing "a" characters, that are not followed by "b" characters. by Not_a_Number (Prior) on Dec 12, 2012 at 18:22 UTC
Try this simple test string before you plump for any of the solutions given: a good boy!	[reply]