regular expression- match a string

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

hello everyone :)
i have a small problem here. i try to extract something from a text input file, but i cant get exactly what i want.

this is the input file example:

From: hweefarn@yahoo.com
Subject: forward to me
To: hweefarn@hotmail.com
Message-id:
<20031212113224.26750.qmail@web10409.mail.yahoo.com>
*******************************************************************************

this is my coding:

if (/^Subject:(\s+)(\S+).*$/)
{
$subject = "$2";
}
******************************************************************************

after run this coding, the output is only "forward".

how can i get the whole subject, "forward to me" ?

thank you very much.

regards,
hweefarn

Comment on regular expression- match a string

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Re: regular expression- match a string by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Dec 12, 2003 at 12:17 UTC
`if (/^Subject:\s+(.*)/) {$subject = $1}` [download] Abigail	[reply] [d/l]
Re: regular expressions - match the string by b10m (Vicar) on Dec 12, 2003 at 12:20 UTC
You get only "forward", because you ask regexp to filter it for you ;) `if (/^Subject:(\s+)(\S+).$/` [download] This means, show me the whitespaces between "Subject:" and the next non-whitespace as $1. Then, show me every non-whitespace character to the next whitespace, as $2. This will solve it: `if (/^Subject:(\s+)(.)$/) { $subject = $2; }` [download] -- b10m Update: Spelling ... Me no speaky Engrish ...	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: regular expression- match a string by davido (Cardinal) on Dec 12, 2003 at 16:45 UTC
Since (\S+) means to capture all contiguous non-whitespace, the part that gets captured must end when the RE engine encounters a space after "forward". You're successfully capturing a space into $1, and "forward" into $2. The RE you probably seek is: `/^Subject:\s+(\S.*)$/` [download] That way you capture beginning with the first non-space character after "Subject: ", and continue your match, including whitespace between words, through the end of the line. $1 will contain your subject. Dave	[reply] [d/l]