I thought you said in an earlier reply you wanted an array. If you want a hash ref then try this, the while loop matches both values

#!perl
use strict;
use HTML::Entities;
use Data::Dump 'pp';

my $string = "Group: Group Name▼▼Role: Role Name";
$string = decode_entities($string);
my $href={};
while ( $string =~ /(Group|Role)\:\s+([\x00-\x7f]*)/g ){
  $href->{$1} = $2;
};
pp $href;
print "Role = $href->{'Role'}\n";
print "Group= $href->{'Group'}\n";
[download]

Getting closer... Thank you! Sorry if I'm not clear enough, there's a lot of strings I'm matching against, but what I want remains the same. I want the group and role names in the hash. For instance, I used a string like this:

$string = "Role: Role Name▼▼Profile: Unnecessary_Extra_Stuff";

but it returned:

This is the Role Name:Role Name▼▼Profile Name: Unnecessary_Extra_Stuff

FYI, here's my code snippet:


while ( ${$ref}{$k}{'DIRTYDATA'} =~ /(Group|Role)\:\s+([\x00-\x7f]*)/g
+ ){
 ${$ref}{$k}{$1} = $2;
}
print "\n\nThis is the Group Name: " . ${$ref}{$k}{Group};
print "\nThis is the Role Name: " . ${$ref}{$k}{Role};
[download]



I only want it to return Group or Role names, not Profile names and no extended ascii characters.

I did mention an array before, but it's storing fine in my HoH which I'm getting out of a fetchall hashref from DBI, so storage really isn't the problem, the problem is only matching role group names in these dirty little strings.

Thanks.
- 3dbc

What do you get if you print your string with Data::Dump like this

#!perl
use strict;
use HTML::Entities;
use Data::Dump 'pp';

my $string = decode_entities(
    "Role: Role Name▼▼Profile: Unnecessary_Extra_Stuff");

pp $string;
[download]