Hi, I'm trying to match (and eventually replace) a string that contains a starting # followed by a single digit that represents the length of the following byte count, then this is all followed by a string of binary bytes.
For a simple example: #18abcdefgh
This would represent a 8 byte buffer containing the ascii values of 'abcdefgh'.
I've tried the following, but it will not match. Seems to fail as soon as I include the first backreference as a quantifier. 
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;

my $inputText = "word1, word2, #18abcdefgh ,word4";

print "before: $inputText\n";

if ($inputText =~ s/#(\d)(\d{\1})(.{\2})/\<Binary block: $2 bytes\>/)
    {
    print "(1) = $1\n";
    print "(2) = $2\n";
    print "(3) = $3\n";
    }

print "after: $inputText\n";

[download]
Your suggestions are welcomed!
johnbo

In reply to Can I use backreferences as quantifiers in a regex? by johnbo

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