Re^2: First word

Unfortunately, the definition of the \w character class does not match what natural languages consider as "word characters". See also perlre.

Example:

/tmp>cat 1174444-mod.pl
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my @AoA = (
    ['first word', 'greek latin'],
    ['alpha omega', 'beta test'],
    ["don't forget", "can't work", "won't fix" ],
    ["Kindergärten Kindergarten"]
);
my @firsties;

for my $outer (@AoA) {
    for my $inner (@$outer) {
        push @firsties, $inner =~ /^(\w+)/;
    }
}

print "@firsties\n";

/tmp>perl 1174444-mod.pl
first greek alpha beta don can won Kinderg

/tmp>perl -v

This is perl 5, version 18, subversion 1 (v5.18.1) built for x86_64-li
+nux-thread-multi

Copyright 1987-2013, Larry Wall

Perl may be copied only under the terms of either the Artistic License
+ or the
GNU General Public License, which may be found in the Perl 5 source ki
+t.

Complete documentation for Perl, including FAQ lists, should be found 
+on
this system using "man perl" or "perldoc perl".  If you have access to
+ the
Internet, point your browser at http://www.perl.org/, the Perl Home Pa
+ge.


/tmp>
[download]

Alexander

--
Today I will gladly share my knowledge and experience, for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so". ;-)

Comment on Re^2: First word Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^3: First word by Marshall (Canon) on Oct 22, 2016 at 12:47 UTC
well, ok, replace, `$inner =~ /^(\w+)/` [download] with: `$inner =~ /^(\S+)/` [download] and we get: `print "@firsties\n"; #first greek alpha beta don't can't won't Kindergärten` [download] Good point. \w means the characters that can be used within a Perl identifier `[0-9_A-Za-z]` Sometimes, as in this case, \S (not a space) is useful.	[reply] [d/l] [select]