Re^4: Parsing Strings

Thank you for your honesty and I do appreciate your help. I figured out $(.*?)${3} would make it work catching the 3rd (), but it'd drop anything with less than 3 (). The script simply needs to pick up the contain in the outermost () without knowing how many () are there.

.A(B)
.A((B))
.A(((B)))

So, \((.*?)\){2} doesn't work for me
tried \((.*?)\)+  but not working either....
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there must be a simpler way..... Anyone?

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Re^5: Parsing Strings by ww (Archbishop) on Mar 15, 2016 at 04:11 UTC
OK, given the clarification that the number of parens will be unknown, the regex solution will require anchoring the last ")" to the end of the line (if that's not the case, you'll need to pursue a more complex regex-approach, or another (perhaps part of the `List::...` family?). <Update>: I misread a bit of your latest node: You have figured out ONE ASPECT of quantifiers. So read about them more deeply. Perl provides a mechanism for using a range... and that, combined with the hint below, should solve your problem.</Update> The references I gave earlier stand and I add the note that regexen permit use of a "$" sign as an anchor to the end of string. (NB: "string" and "line" don't necessarily mean the same thing, but if you have an expression with an unknown number of parens and (possibly) unknown number of lines or placements of the parens, go for a module designed to parse your specific data-format. Chew on that for a bit and as you do, read up on regexen. You'll learn more that way than asking multiple questions whose answers grow out of basic knowledge, such as can be acquired from perldoc, man pages, and, if necessary, additional tutorials, books, etc. Spirit of the Monastery	[reply] [d/l]

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Re^5: Parsing Strings
by ww (Archbishop) on Mar 15, 2016 at 04:11 UTC

OK, given the clarification that the number of parens will be unknown, the regex solution will require anchoring the last ")" to the end of the line (if that's not the case, you'll need to pursue a more complex regex-approach, or another (perhaps part of the List::... family?).

<Update>: I misread a bit of your latest node: You have figured out ONE ASPECT of quantifiers. So read about them more deeply. Perl provides a mechanism for using a range... and that, combined with the hint below, should solve your problem.</Update>

The references I gave earlier stand and I add the note that regexen permit use of a "$" sign as an anchor to the end of string. (NB: "string" and "line" don't necessarily mean the same thing, but if you have an expression with an unknown number of parens and (possibly) unknown number of lines or placements of the parens, go for a module designed to parse your specific data-format.

Chew on that for a bit and as you do, read up on regexen. You'll learn more that way than asking multiple questions whose answers grow out of basic knowledge, such as can be acquired from perldoc, man pages, and, if necessary, additional tutorials, books, etc.

Spirit of the Monastery

[reply]
[d/l]