regex problem

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hmm.

if ($line =~ /(.*?)\s*?(.*?$)/) {
      $grp = $1;
      $dsc = $2;
}
[download]

$line may or may not have anything following it, or it may have one or more whitespace characters after matching $1.

What's wrong with this? Here's some sample data:

alt.philosophy.jarf     The Jarf philosphy/metaphysics/religion/cultur
+e.
alt.philosophy.objectivism      A product of the Ayn Rand corporation.
alt.philosophy.zen      Meditating on how the alt.* namespace works.
microsoft.public.win95.setup
microsoft.public.win95.shellui
microsoft.public.win95.win95applets
[download]

The alt.* entries are matched, however the microsoft.* are not.

Edit: chipmunk 2002-01-09

Comment on regex problem Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: regex problem by japhy (Canon) on Jan 10, 2002 at 00:26 UTC
It matches for me, but not as you want it to. Your regex is too relaxed. The `(.?)` tries to match zero characters first (and succeeds). The `\s?` tries to match zero whitespace (and succeeds). The `(.?$)` tries matching zero characters (and fails), and eventually ends up matching the whole line. Boo. You want something like `/(.?)\s+(.)/`, or perhaps `/(\S+)\s+(.)/`. Better yet, use `split()`. `my ($ng, $desc) = split ' ', $record, 2;` _____________________________________________________ Jeff`[japhy]`Pinyan: Perl, regex, and perl hacker. `s++=END;++y(;-P)}y js++=;shajsj<++y(p-q)}?print:??;`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Re: regex problem by Anonymous Monk on Jan 10, 2002 at 00:44 UTC
`my ($ng, $desc) = split ' ', $record, 2;` did the trick with: `$desc = "no description available" unless ($desc);` Thanks for your help!!	[reply] [d/l] [select]