I'm trying to teach myself how to use Regexp::Common, and I'm having a little trouble.

The following works as expected, and finds the number 1234 embedded in the string aaaa1234cccc: 

use strict;
use Regexp::Common;

while ( my $word = <DATA> ) {
  chomp $word;
 if ( $word =~ /$RE{num}{int}/ ) {
    print "Integer detected: \"$word\"\n";
  } else {
    print "$word\n";
  }
}

__DATA__
aaaabbbbcccc
aaaa1234cccc
ddddeeeeffff

[download]

However, this does NOT work as I would expect: 

use strict;
use Regexp::Common;

while ( my $word = <DATA> ) {
  chomp $word;
  if ( $word =~ /$RE{profanity}/ ) {
    print "Profanity detected: \"$word\"\n";
  } else {
    print "$word\n";
  }
}

__DATA__
aaaabbbbcccc
aaaaXXXXcccc
ddddeeeeffff

[download]

In this case, change XXXX into your favorite 4 letter offensive word. If I change the data string to this: "aaaa XXXX cccc" (i.e., add spaces around the XXXX, then it finds it).

It seems like the profanity patterns have start of word / end of word anchors built into the patterns, and thus don't work if the word is embedded inside another string? Is there any way to control this behavior? I've gone through the docs, but so far I can't find a way.

I'm using perl 5.14 (activestate) on Win7. Thanks for any push in the right direction.

In reply to Please help with Regexp::Common by scorpio17

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.