I am having difficulty creating a lazy match. Here is the code I have: 


#!/tool/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my $test_filename = "/user1/lazy_match_test.txt";

my $match = "";

open(TEST_FILE, $test_filename) || die("ERROR: unable to open $test_fi
+lename for read, exiting...\n");

while (<TEST_FILE>)
{
    if ($_ =~ /\/(.+?)$/)
    {
        $match = $1;
    }
    
}

close(TEST_FILE);

printf("matched $match\n");

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Here are the contents of the test file: 


/foo/bar/baz/bat

[download]

I am trying to write a pattern that captures what follows the last slash in the line.

My understanding is that the ? operator is used to tell perl that the previous pattern should be matched lazily, yet when I run the above code, $match is foo/bar/baz/bat, when I wanted bat.

How do I correctly implement the lazy operator? I know that in the above example there are other ways to capture bat without using a lazy operator, but for the sake of the discussion I would like to learn how the lazy operator works and why it isn't working in this case.

I also tried the following for my regex: 

    if ($_ =~ /\/(.+)?$/)

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But it also matched foo/bar/baz/bat

In reply to help with lazy matching by Special_K

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