Hi all!

I'm trying to match a slightly variable pattern and I don't get the point what I'm doing wrong. My pattern looks like this:

u70475_s_at<MAYBE_WHITESPACE><TAB>Mus musculus p45 NF-E2 related factor 2 NRF2 gene exon 2 to exon 5 and complete cds.<MAYBE_WHITESPACE><TAB>2326<MAYBE_TAB>727.3

The second number is optional, numbers can be float or integer.
I try to match the pattern like that:

$_[0] =~ m/([a-zA-Z0-9\-\_\/\.\,]+)
            \s*\t
            (.+)
            \s*\t
            ([0-9\.]+)
            \t*
            ([0-9\.]+)*/;

[download]

It works all fine, until I get a line with two numbers, in this case the first number (which I want in $3) is in $2 together with the text ((.+)). The 2nd number is in $3 then.
When I change the last /t* to /t both numbers are matched the way I want ($3 and $4) but lines with only one number are not matched at all ($1-$4 undef). What's wrong here? Any hints are welcome.

Thanx, Micha

In reply to Pattern matching with \t by professa

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