Hi,
As is frequently the case, the problem cames from misunderstunding greadines of RE + and * operators. Let us take 

/\s+(.*)\s+(.*)/

[download]
which is a simpler version of your RE, and try and match it against "___abc___def" (the "_" represents spaces). First, perl matches \s+ against the three spaces, and the first (.*) against all the other acaracters (that is "abc___def". But now there is a \s+, which require at least a space, so the first .* grundly gives back one character at time, until it only matches "abc__" (two spaces). Now \s+ matches this space, and the second (.*) is free to match "def". After that, $1 is "abc__", and $2 is "def".

I hope this explain things...

Cheers

Leo TheHobbit

In reply to Re: perl regex with '\s+' by TheHobbit
in thread perl regex with '\s+' by emcb

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.