Hi,

Try : 

while(<PAGE>)
{
    if (/pond.*\((\w+)\)/)
    {        print "$1\n";
     }
}
close(PAGE);

[download]
output: 
start
end

[download]

$_ is the default scalar variable. In your while loop, when you read the file, you are NOT specifying any variable to hold the line read from file. So its kept in $_. Again for your regular expression, you are not specify any string/variable to match with. So it again match with $_. So when you print $_, it prints entire line. Again, $1 contains the first matching string. For details please have a look at perlre and perlvar

The above code is same as 

while($_ = <PAGE>)
{
    if ( $_ =~ /pond.*\((\w+)\)/)
    {        print "$1\n";
     }
}
close(PAGE);

[download]
or can be written without relying on $_ as 
my $line;
while($line = <PAGE>)
{
    if ($line =~ /pond.*\((\w+)\)/)
    {        print "$1\n";
     }
}
close(PAGE);

[download]

Cheers !

--VC

In reply to Re: read a word from a line by atemon
in thread read a word from a line by sharan

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