Wait, I don't think you want most of those special variables in your print. ($< being UID, $> being EUID, $| being autoflush... I think you did mean $& as the match). Were you trying to escape the <, >, and/or | ? What were you trying to do with those?

Sir,

What I'm trying to accomplish is to pull a name from the list and print it out. I have done this various ways, but I'm trying to do this as requested in chapter 8, exercise #3 in the 'Learning Pearl' book by O'Reilly. I have corrected all of the typos that were pointed out,(very humbling that I did not pick up on that). I am still running into problems.

 
#!/bin/perl
use v5.12;
use warnings;


     my $Namelist  = 'Wilma Fred Barney Betty Dino';

       if ( $Namelist =~  m/(\w+a)/  {
          print "Matched|$<$&$>|\n";
          say "The name that matched was $1 \n";
       }  else {
          print "No match: \n";
          } 
 syntax error at ./exer_8_3 line 8, near "m/(\w+a)/  {"
 syntax error at ./exer_8_3 line 11, near "}"
[download]

Thanks again, Catfish

Catfish, you still have a typo: you dropped the closing parenthesis for the if() block.

use v5.12;
use warnings;


my $Namelist  = 'Wilma Fred Barney Betty Dino';

if ( $Namelist =~  m/(\w+a)/ ) {
    print "Matched|$<$&$>|\n";
    say "The name that matched was $1 \n";
}  else {
    print "No match: \n";
}
[download]

This code results in:

Matched|0Wilma0|
The name that matched was Wilma
[download]

Note the strange "0" before and after "Wilma". I am in Windows, so I don't get a $< UID or a $> EUID. As I pointed out, those varibles make no sense in the context of trying to print matched output. When I asked what you "what were you trying to do with those", I was trying to get clarification of what you wanted your output to look like. Were you trying to have angle brackets literally used in your output? like:

Matched|<Wilma>|
The name that matched was Wilma
[download]

That would be accomplished with print "Matched|<$&>|\n";

Or were you trying to have literal dollar signs and literal angle brackets? like:

Matched|$<Wilma>$|
The name that matched was Wilma
[download]

That would be accomplished with print "Matched|\$<$&\$>|\n";

Or did you just really want Wilma to be printed between the vertical bars? like:

Matched|Wilma|
The name that matched was Wilma
[download]

That would be accomplished with print "Matched|$&|\n";

Or did you really want the linux user-id number ($<) and effective user-id number ($>) to surround Wilma? like:

Matched|###Wilma###|
The name that matched was Wilma
[download]

(where ### are actual numbers, not the number-signs I have shown): That would be accomplished with print "Matched|$<$&$>|\n";

       if ( $Namelist =~  m/(\w+a)/  {

You have opened 2 sets of brackets but only closed one.

if ( $Namelist =~ m/(\w+a)/ ) {
[download]

Thanks for all PerlMonks that posted, (yet another stupid typo). I am forever in your debt.

You (pryrt) are one of the most loyal, honest and trustworthy persons I've ever met regarding code. I'm sorry I beat you to the punch here ;)

You have not only "assisted" me on extremely major projects, but actually wrote, and re-wrote code on behalf of our (yes, our) major berrybrew project, including *massive, major and new* test scenarios and functionality.

If I could give you the Perlmonks XP, I would :P

Thanks. :-) (And being beat to the punch doesn't really bother me.)