Update: A regular expression would allow you to modify the text "in place" in your arrays. Others have suggested using split to break the text apart, which would work fine (and more efficiently) if you're wanting to just get at the text on either side of the equals sign. You could make your changes and re-combine the new left side and the old right side when you were done if you wanted. Otherwise...

I'm assuming that you mean that you have a list built sorta like this: 

@listA = ('This=That', 'Some=Song');
@listB = ('Other=That', 'Corny=Song');

[download]
If you wish to change the text, you'd start off with this regular expression: 
$text =~ s/.+?=/$new_text=/;

[download]
This will replace everything up to the equal sign with the text in $new_text. Now, to adapt it to modify the items in your arrays: 
foreach (@listA, @listB) {   # or just one of the two, whatever
   # set $new_text to whatever you want
   s/.+?=/$new_text=/;
}

[download]
The trailing = sign after $new_text is necessary because my pattern (trying to keep it simple) also included an equal sign. You could just as easily do this: 
s/.+?(?==)/$new_text/;

[download]
Hope this answers your question.

In reply to Re: Regular Expression I think. by Fastolfe
in thread Regular Expression I think. by ergowolf

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.