I wrote a subroutine to strip specified patterns out of an array I passed: 

sub remove_pattern_from_array {
    my $pattern = shift (@_);
    my @holder_array = qw//;
    foreach my $line (@_){
        unless ($line =~ /$pattern/){
            push (@holder_array, $line);
        }
    }
    return @holder_array;
}

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This works fine. However, I want to parse each line of a supposed aliases file into an array, then make sure all of the elements of the array look like they belong in a unix aliases file: 
username:     me@you.com

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should pass the test, whereas 
garbagetest#$^#$^#$%^#$

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should fail the test and thus get kicked out of the array

Given the above subroutine, what pattern should I pass to it to make this happen?
I've tried the following: 
    @aliases_array = remove_pattern_from_array (
        "^\$|^#|!(^.+?:\\s+.+\$)", @aliases_array);

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The first two alternatives get rid of blank lines and comment lines, but the last part of the pattern isn't picking out only the alias-style lines.

So: what gives?

In reply to looking for aliases(5)-style entries in a text file by greenmoss

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