Monks,


I've not been able to figure this simple regex problem. I need to match strings in one of the two formats below (after reading from a file):

"/moreIters 10"
"/bootMe any text here"
/fewIter

If the string begins with a quote, I need all data enclosed within the quotes, else the entire string that begins with /

To begin with, I wrote the following simplistic regex: 

$str =~ m,"?(/.*)"?,

[download]
which means match zero or 1 double quote, followed by / followed by any number of characters followed by an optional double quote. However, this doesn't work because .* matches the quotes as well, and I get the following: 
my $str = qq( "/extend 100" );
$str =~ m,"?(/.*)"?,;
if (defined $1) {
   print "matched=$1\n";
}

$perl regex.pl 
matched=/extend 100"

[download]
The above works for strings such as /justThis: 
my $str = qq(/extendMe );
$str =~ m,"?(/.*)"?,;
if (defined $1) {
   print "matched=$1\n";
}

$perl regex.pl 
matched=/extendMe

[download]
How can I refine this regex to get the desired result?

Thanks!

In reply to dumb regex question by linuxfan

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.