I'm struggling to capture a portion from URL string (using shell script) like this: 

XXX="/blah1/blah2/blah3/1234567890;arg=AAA123BBB456CCC"
#         alphanumeric: ^^^^^^^^^^
#                       optional: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
#                   fixed string: ^^^^^
#                        alphanumeric: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
echo "$XXX" | perl -n -e 'if (m[^/.+/([^/\?\s]+)(?:;arg=)?]) {print "$
+1\n";}'

[download]

The part I need to capture is: "1234567890" (alphanumeric string)
The trailing ";arg=AAA123BBB456CCC" is optional (may or may not appear in the string).

What I'm getting instead is:
1234567890;arg=AAA123BBB456CCC

Thanks for any help with this.


SOLVED:
Just added the ";" to the non-matching list:
echo "$XXX" | perl -n -e 'if (m[^/.+/([^/\?\s;]+)(?:;arg=)?]) {print "
+$1\n";}'
                                             ^

[download]


Thanks for all the suggestions! I'll definitely look into URI for help with parsing.

In reply to matching substring in url by cioperl

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