How do I extract a substring from the middle of a larger string? For example, if I have a string (one of many in a list with different sizes): WXYZ 100 THIS IS THE STRING I WANT 56.78 0905 and I would like to extract "THIS IS THE STRING I WANT". I can't use substr() as the offsets are not always the same (for example, the first 2 words could be "WXY 10"). I tried substr() with a combination of index(), but couldn't figure out how to do a alpha or numeric wildcard for the search substring. The first two 'words' and the last 2 'words' always have the same characteristics (i.e. all letters or all digits).

In reply to substring extraction by tpane

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.