but doesn't seem to be working. What am I doing wrong?

"not working" can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. Please take a look at I know what I mean. Why don't you? or How do I post a question effectively? so we can better understand your issue. Posting code with sample input and expected output is very helpful in diagnosing problems.

Based on what you've posted, I'm guessing the issue you are having is with greedy matching. .* matches as much as it can, whereas .*? grabs the shortest string that meets the criteria. So perhaps the code

($content) = $item1 =~ m/\/(.*?)\?/;

does what you intend? See perlretut for more info.

Also possibly at fault is white space I see in your posted expression. Of course, that might just be an artifact of the fact that you didn't wrap your code in <code> tags; see Writeup Formatting Tips.


In reply to Re: How do i get string between by kennethk
in thread How do i get string between by Anonymous Monk

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.