grep for a name

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

Hello , I am trying to grep for a name within a big file with a lots of data somthing like :

blablblablabjb
blabalbbaabb;b
blablababja;b
Type:   Divorced
dffggf
blbab
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so I am greping for the value in the Type which is Divorced and thats in the fourth line , I want somthing like :

$goal = Divorced;
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I am doing the follwing :

if (m/^(Type:)\s*(\w+)/);  
{
    $goal = $1;
}
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can someone just tell me what is wrong with my code !! thanks

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Re: grep for a name by DamnDirtyApe (Curate) on Jul 30, 2002 at 20:35 UTC
Drop the semicolon from the end of your `if`. You want `$goal = $2`, not `$1`. (Even better, drop the parentheses around `Type:`.) HTH _______________ D a m n D i r t y A p e Home Node \| Email	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: grep for a name by VSarkiss (Monsignor) on Jul 30, 2002 at 20:38 UTC
You don't mention what's not working up to your expectations, but my guess is that `$goal` being set to `Type:` is not what you want. You're unnecessarily capturing a constant string. You should either not capture it: `if (m/^Type:\s(\w+)/) { $goal = $1 }`or use non-capturing parens: `if (m/^(?:Type:)\s(\w+)/) { $goal = $1 }`or keep the pattern the way it is and pull out the second pair of parens: `if (m/^(Type:)\s*(\w+)/) { $goal = $2 }`Many more details at perlop (look for "Quotes and quote-like operators") and perlre. This is all guesswork on my part about what the problem is. Hope I guessed right!	[reply] [d/l] [select]