(jeffa) Re: A regex I cant get my head around

Looks like it is trying to parse key value pairs that are delimited by ampersands ... maybe GET parameters? [^&]+ matches anything that is not an ampersand and the parens around it capture the match into $1. \& matches a mandatory ampersand. Here is some test code to see what is matched and what is not:

use strict;

for (qw(foo foo& &foo foo&bar)) {
    /([^&]+)\&/;
    print "$_ - $1\n";
}
[download]

Seems to me that the variable $key in your code should be renamed $value, because that is what it is really trying to capture. Also, depending upon what the goal really is for this code, i might suggest using a CPAN module such as URI to pull out the key/value pairs:

use strict;
use URI;

my $uri = URI->new();
$uri->query('THING=super%20hero&KEY=foobar');

my %hash = $uri->query_form();

print $hash{KEY}, "\n";
[download]

Notice that KEY is last, and it's value is not succeeded by an ampersand.

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)

Comment on (jeffa) Re: A regex I cant get my head around Select or Download Code

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Re: (jeffa) Re: A regex I cant get my head around by Anonymous Monk on Aug 03, 2002 at 21:08 UTC
Thanks cLive and jeffa, but it has nothing to do with GET params. If `$text->as_string() = "startKEY=jdjhjfg8y4uh449845&finish"` [download] what value ids assigned to $key?	[reply] [d/l]
(jeffa) 3Re: A regex I cant get my head around by jeffa (Bishop) on Aug 03, 2002 at 21:13 UTC
Why not find out for yourself? All you need to do is change your code to something like: `my $as_string = 'startKEY=jdjhjfg8y4uh449845&finish'; $as_string =~ /KEY=([^&]+)\&/; print $1, "\n";` [download] Regardless of whether or not this has to do with GET params, you can still use URI to parse any key=value pairs that are delimited by ampersands: `use strict; use URI; my $uri = URI->new(); $uri->query('startKEY=jdjhjfg8y4uh449845&finish'); my %pair = $uri->query_form(); print $pair{startKEY}, "\n";` [download] jeffa L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L-- -R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B-- H---H---H---H---H---H--- (the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)	[reply] [d/l] [select]