in reply to Improved regexp sought

Can anybody suggest a change to the second line, and take me further along the path?
Sure, change the second line to: 
my @fields = qw(0010 2 O'Reilly);

[download]
But if you want more help, you'll need to help us by describing what you want in words, not just have us second-guess your regex.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: Improved regexp sought
by myomancer (Novice) on Oct 27, 2004 at 14:32 UTC

    Point taken merlyn.

    I have a file with multiple lines in. Each line consists of a variable number of variable-length fields separated by a + character. Each line is terminated by a ' character. Sometimes, a field might have a ' character in it - if so, the ' is preceeded by a question-mark. Here are some example lines: 

    0010+2+O'Reilly'
023++++234+35+White+++17+'
g?'day mate+++'

    [download]
    I want to break each line up into its constituent fields. I can do it with brute force, but would prefer elegance.

    Thanks
    Myomancer

[reply]
[d/l]

      Mayhap you want to take a multi-step approach. 

      $string =~ s/'$//;
$string =~ s/\?'/'/g;
@fields = split /\+/, $string;

      [download]
      I want to break each line up into its constituent fields. I can do it with brute force, but would prefer elegance.

      I usually choose "working" over "not working" :-)

      duff

[reply]
[d/l]

      use Text::CSV_XS. I guessed that your lines were terminated with apostrophe + newline. Alter the code to fit.

      use Text::CSV_XS;

my $parser = Text::CSV_XS->new( {
    eol => "'\n",
    escape_char => "'",
    sep_char => "+" } );

while ( my $line = <$fh> ) {
    $parser->parse( $line );

    print join( ", ", $parser->fields ) . "\n";
}

      [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
      myomancer,
      I can do it with brute force, but would prefer elegance

      I hope you aren't confusing conciseness with elegance. There are not always related. See the following: 

      my $str   = "0010+2+O?'Reilly'";
my @field = map {s/\?'/'/g; $_ } split /\+/ , substr($str,0, (length $
+str) - 1);
print "[$_]$field[$_]\n" for 0 .. $#field;

      [download]
      IMO, the code would be more elegant broken out into multiple lines - perhaps with comments.

      Cheers - L~R

[reply]
[d/l]

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom