That may not be doing what you expect! Consider:

#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; for my $tail ('Z.z', '1.z', 'a(x)z', 'aaa', 'aa_', 'xxx@') { my $str = "name = $tail"; if ($str =~ /name\s*=\s*([A-Za-z].+\w)/) { print "Matched >$1< in >$str<\n"; } else { print "No match for >$str<\n"; } }

Prints:

Matched >Z.z< in >name = Z.z< No match for >name = 1.z< Matched >a(x)z< in >name = a(x)z< Matched >aaa< in >name = aaa< Matched >aa_< in >name = aa_< Matched >xxx< in >name = xxx@<

[A-Za-z] matches a single letter. .+ matches at least one characters and as many as it possibly can such that the remainder of the regular expression matches. \w matches a single alphanumeric or underscore character.


True laziness is hard work

In reply to Re^5: Need some help with Regex by GrandFather
in thread Need some help with Regex by perlmonk1

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.