Problems With Pattern Matching

EchoAngel has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi Monks In one variable i have the following :

         values ( \
          "0.017874, 0.021970, 0.030369, 0.046419, 0.079837, 0.149591,
+ 0.293028", \
          "0.017943, 0.022035, 0.030418, 0.046421, 0.079824, 0.149598,
+ 0.293026", \
          "0.018809, 0.022714, 0.030916, 0.046686, 0.079949, 0.149627,
+ 0.293054", \
          "0.022414, 0.026140, 0.033679, 0.048570, 0.080821, 0.149893,
+ 0.292930", \
          "0.027887, 0.031599, 0.038779, 0.053037, 0.084057, 0.151348,
+ 0.293312", \
          "0.036945, 0.040592, 0.047732, 0.061178, 0.090290, 0.155268,
+ 0.295424", \
          "0.051912, 0.055826, 0.063219, 0.076534, 0.104252, 0.165988,
+ 0.302410");
[download]

I tried $line_data =~ s/\bvalues\b\s*(.*)\;//; but nothing is changing. Any Ideas?

Comment on Problems With Pattern Matching Download Code

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Re: Problems With Pattern Matching by ikegami (Patriarch) on Nov 16, 2004 at 16:07 UTC
You want to use `s///s` instead of just `s///`, since `.` doesn't match newlines without the `/s`: `s/\bvalues\b\s(.)\;//s` The `\` is unnecessary in `\;`: `s/\bvalues\b\s(.);//s` The regexp might match more than you want it to match, unless you change the `.` to `.?`: `s/\bvalues\b\s(.?);//s` Are you trying to capture (set $1) with the parens, or trying to match the parens in $line_data? If the latter, than you need to escape the parens in the regexp with a `\`: `s/\bvalues\b\s$.?$;//s` Doing so also makes the second \b redundant, so you end up with: `s/\bvalues\s$.?$;//s;`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Problems With Pattern Matching by Jaap (Curate) on Nov 16, 2004 at 16:03 UTC
What are you trying to achieve? Does `$line_data =~ s/values\s//;` do something? Maybe you can build it up from there.	[reply] [d/l]