in reply to [untitled node, ID 192753]

If you're going to do this using a regex you're going to need to use m's parentheses matching capabilities.

For the example text you posted, this does work. 

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

$line = '<!-- USER 20 - donkey_pusher_6 -->';
print $1 if $line =~ m/\s-{1}\s(\w.+)\s/i;

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What it is saying is, look for a single dash surronded by spaces. Then the next alphanumeric characters up until the next space are stored in $1. That's where the parenthesis come in with your match. If you have more than one set of parens, then your matches are stored in $2, $3, etc...

I am going on the assumption here that all your data is in that format. If not, then hopefully that will give you a start in the right direction.

Good luck!

Some people fall from grace. I prefer a running start...

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re: Regex simplification
by Cody Pendant (Prior) on Aug 26, 2002 at 03:22 UTC
    I'd do it like this: 
    $line = '<!-- USER 20 - donkey_pusher_6 -->';
print $1 if $line =~ m/<!-- USER \d+ - ([^\s]+)/i;

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    because you might get false-positive matches the other way.
    -- 
    ($_='jjjuuusssttt annootthheer
     pppeeerrrlll haaaccckkeer')=~y/a-z//s;print;

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      print $1 if $line =~ m/<!-- USER \d+ - ([^\s]+)/i;

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      This is good, but it \S is shorter than [^\s], so: 
      print $1 if $line =~ m/<!-- USER \d+ - (\S+)/i;

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      Although to get a little closer to the original specification, I'd put: 
      my $user=undef;
for (@site) {
  if (/<!--.*USER.* (\S+) -->/) {
    print "joe:\n";
    $user = $1;
    last;
  }
}
print "user = $user\n";

      [download]
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