in reply to Retreaving N first sentences from text.

Uhhh.. if you know that all sentences are separated by the '.', then why not do something like: 
sub get_nsentences {
    my ($source_text, $n) = @_;

    my @sentences = split /\.\s*/, $source_text;
    $ret_text = (join '.', @sentences[0..$n-1]) . '.';

    return $ret_text;
}

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Re: Re: Retrieving N first sentences from text.
by boo_radley (Parson) on Dec 15, 2001 at 03:55 UTC
    broken : She said "I believe this will be the winter of my discontent. Then again, I may drink some egg-nog. Who knows?".
    How many sentences there?
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Re: Re: Retreaving N first sentences from text.
by blakem (Monsignor) on Dec 15, 2001 at 03:59 UTC
    You could use the /g regex modifier to overcome the 'only periods' assumption.... 
    sub get_nsentences {
  my $text = shift;
  my $count = shift || 1;
  join '', ($text =~ /.*?[\.!?]/sg)[0..$count-1]
}

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    This keeps the punctuation with the "sentence" so you don't have to keep track of what it was.... i.e. you can join with '', not with '.'

    -Blake

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