my $text = <<'END';
Name: Alice Allison Age: 23
Occupation: Spy
Name: Bob Barkely Age: 45
Occupation: Fry Cook
Name: Carol Carson Age: 44
Occupation: Manager
Name: Prince Age: 53
Occupation: World Class Musician
END
my %age_for;
while ( $text =~ m<Name:\s+([[:alpha:] ]+?)\s+Age:\s+(\d+)>g ) {
$age_for{$1} = $2;
}
print Dumper(\%age_for);

[download]

The [:alpha: ] matches alphabetic characters plus a space character, so I think "\s+Age:" should match one or more space and "Age:". There is only one space between name and age.

Why?

the following output: 

$VAR1 = {
‘Bob Barkely’ => ‘45’,
‘Alice Allison’ => ‘23’,
‘Carol Carson’ => ‘44’,
‘Prince’ => ‘53’
};

[download]

This question come from the book <beginning perl> page 234.

In reply to a regex pattern how to understand by Thai Heng

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