So, I'm trying to match, in a string, all values that are abbreviations. In this string:

"a history of u.s. coast guard aviation."

I would like the "u.s." to become "us" but not replace any other periods. Another example would be taking "M.C. Esher" and converting to "MC Esher"

So far, I can remove the middle dot, with a:

$string =~ s/(?<=\w)\.(?=\w)//g;

But I can't figure out how to do a lookahead/lookbehind/lookahead/lookbehind... I've tried this, and it fails:

$string =~ s/(?<=\w)\.(?=\w)\.(?=\s)//g;

Any ideas, Monks?


In reply to Lookahead/Lookbehind Regular Expression... by mogmismo

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.