I have been playing around with a RE that is supposed to extract the value of a tag.

The program below already does the right thing, but I have an undefined feeling that it could be done with some kind of alternation aka |. But I can't get it to do what I want. I have been reading the docs but either the info is too thin or my head is too thick.

So I was wondering if someone can show me how alternation can/should be used.

#!perl -w
use strict;

while( <DATA> ) {
    chomp;
    my ( $data ) = m/TAG:\"([^\"]+)\"/ ? $1 : m/TAG:([^\"\s]+)/ ? $1 :
+ 'not_def';
    print "$_ => $data\n";
}

__DATA__
TAG:"test of data"
TAG:test_of_data
TAG:test of data
TAG: test
TAG:test of data"
TAG:"test of data
TAG:test-2_3.we

[download]
TIA

In reply to Alternation in pattern matches by guha

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