I am working on an IRC bot for scractch. I am having problem's fine tuning the commands that are passed to it. 
if($_ =~ /^:(.*)!(.*) PRIVMSG $channel :(.*)$/){
 my $user = $1;
 my $host = $2;
 my $message = $3;
 if($message =~ /^!quit$/){
  die "Quiting!\n";
 }
}

[download]
$_ is comming from the socket. The user, host and message do get parsed out correctly, but when it comes to the commands, !quit for an example, it will only work if I broaden the regex by removeing the carrot and the scalar, ^ and $. The striing being parsed looks exactly like: 
:Admin!Admin@leet-A0B340B0.host.com PRIVMSG #channel :!quit

[download]
Is $message being giving some unseen values from $3 that would not allow the !quit command from working when it is fine tuned with ^ and $? If it it is not fine tuned, !quit could appear anywhere in the message and work, which is not good :) Thanks for any ideas and help.

Retitled by davido.

In reply to Regexp problem matching commands for IRC bot by StrifeChild

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.