Provided you do read perlre and the other fine references so that you have a basis for understanding, you might find YAPE::Regex::Explain (by our own japhy) to be of use.

perl -MYAPE::Regex::Explain -e "print YAPE::Regex::Explain->new(shift)->explain;" "^\s*$"

yields 

The regular expression:

(?-imsx:^\s*$)

matches as follows:

NODE                     EXPLANATION
----------------------------------------------------------------------
(?-imsx:                 group, but do not capture (case-sensitive)
                         (with ^ and $ matching normally) (with . not
                         matching \n) (matching whitespace and #
                         normally):
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  ^                        the beginning of the string
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  \s*                      whitespace (\n, \r, \t, \f, and " ") (0 or
                           more times (matching the most amount
                           possible))
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  $                        before an optional \n, and the end of the
                           string
----------------------------------------------------------------------
)                        end of grouping
----------------------------------------------------------------------

[download]

--
I'd like to be able to assign to an luser

In reply to Re: Reg Expression translation by Albannach
in thread Reg Expression translation by Anonymous Monk

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.