in reply to Why doesn't non-greediness work?

$body =~ s/<img(.+?)="Wink">/;)/g;

Why doesn't the wink smiley captured?
Probably because perl is interpreting this as two commands...
$body =~ s/<img(.+?)="Wink">/;
)/g;

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The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously. -- Nicholas Butler

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Re: Re: Why doesn't non-greediness work?
by tedrek (Pilgrim) on May 13, 2003 at 02:06 UTC
    actually perl is smart enough to avoid that.. in fact you can do something as disturbing as

    $body =~ s;<img(.+?)="Wink">;\;;g;

    which is why they say only perl can parse perl.

[reply]
[d/l]
      Yes, but notice that you escaped one of those semicolons... In the original, the semicolon that was part of the smiley was not escaped.

      The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously. -- Nicholas Butler
[reply]
        Please familiarize yourself with the quoting rules in Perl. All of the following work as well: 
        $body =~ ss<img(.+?)="Wink">s;)sg;
$body =~ s$<img(.+?)="Wink">$;)$g;
$body =~ s,<img(.+?)="Wink">,;),g;
$body =~ s[<img(.+?)="Wink">]\;)\g;
$body =~ s}<img(.+?)="Wink">}{;)}g;
$body =~ s&<img(.+?)="Wink">&;)&g;
# .. ad nauseam

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        Makeshifts last the longest.

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[d/l]
Re^2: Why doesn't non-greediness work? (not two commands)
by Aristotle (Chancellor) on May 13, 2003 at 15:27 UTC
    No it isn't. )/g; is not valid Perl so you'd get an error message about that in that case. perl is very smart about inferring the correct delimiter in the overwhelming majority of cases anyway; please check your assumptions next time.

    Makeshifts last the longest.

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