in reply to golf anyone? (taking first field)

Here's my shot (37 chars): 
map{/([^:]*?)(\s*\n|\s*:)/&&$1}@list;

# silly me ... distributive property! update: 34 chars:

map{/([^:]*?)\s*(\n|:)/&&$1}@list;

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I tested it with the following data and it seemed to work correctly: 
__DATA__
123 : oain:b:okfbd

456
foo bar    : df a dsaf asdf
111 :

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It doesn't work when the input line contains only whitespace, but it does work for blank (other than the \n) lines. It returns empty string when the colon is the first non-whitespace. I don't know if this is correct behavior or not, though! This is my first golf attempt, so I may have missed some regex shortening tricks.

Update: Here's a slightly different approach that's the same 34 chars, although it behaves differently. This one does ignore lines of complete whitespace. It still gives empty string when a colon is the first non-whitespace in the line. 

map{(split/\s*(:|\n|$)/)[0]}@list;

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blokhead

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Re: Re: golf anyone? (taking first field)
by John M. Dlugosz (Monsignor) on Jan 07, 2003 at 07:20 UTC
    If the colon begins the line, it should be the same as an empty line. That is, remove the '' from the output list.
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      In that case, 
      map{/([^:]*?)\s*(:|$)/;$1||()}@list;

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      Back to 36 chars. ;)

      blokhead

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[d/l]
        Yea, that's what I noticed when I decided to throw it out as a golf: stopping at the colon or the end-of-line complicates things in a slightly subtle manner. Doing it in multiple passes it's no big deal: chomp first, then delete the tail end stuff, then throw it away if empty. But that's not elegant, and it doesn't just "fit together" as a composition of functions (one feeding the result to the next outer one).

        I think this also has an interestingly high punctuation to alpha ratio.

        I see you make sure the pattern always matches, so $1 is always OK (just empty).

        —John

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