Hi, I have a problem in specifying a pattern match where the string can include anything. I'm tring to hide passwords in text. The basic formats of the text are as follows.
Format 1
logger abcdef123,"$£*&GHi^

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Note that both of the elements delimited by the comma are passwords. If a password contains non alphanumeric characters it has to be in quotes.
Format 2
logger "765)(?>jh",hhhhhh,joebloggs

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In this example I would only want to hide elements 1 & 2. The third is a username. The code I was using which worked until the passwords were changed to include non-alphanumeric characters was 
$string =~ s/(logger\s+)(\w+)(\W+)(\w+)/$1 . ("X" x length($2) . $3 . 
+("X" x length($4))/e;

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A caveat is that if a password is inside quotes it may actually contain a comma as part of the password ! How do I change this to be able to handle any characters in the password ?

In reply to Match any characters by Anonymous Monk

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