Pulling first 10 characters out of string?

mav1c has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Pulling first 10 characters out of string? by sgifford (Prior) on Dec 13, 2004 at 15:58 UTC
Read the documentation for the `substr` function.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Pulling first 10 characters out of string? by mav1c (Initiate) on Dec 20, 2004 at 16:21 UTC
Thanks for all the help. I think I was being a little lazy. Thanks again everyone!	[reply]
Re: Pulling first 10 characters out of string? by exussum0 (Vicar) on Dec 13, 2004 at 16:03 UTC
Better to use substr, but this caught my eye... `$x = "abcdefghijklmop"; print $x =~/^(.{10})/;` [download] ---- Give me strength for today.. I will not talk it away.. Just for a moment.. It will burn through the clouds.. and shine down on me.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Pulling first 10 characters out of string? by hmerrill (Friar) on Dec 13, 2004 at 16:08 UTC
The op did say "digits", so what about `print $x =~/^(\d{10})/;` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: Pulling first 10 characters out of string? by exussum0 (Vicar) on Dec 13, 2004 at 16:13 UTC
Definitely have a point. Guess it depends on where the data validation goes on. ---- Give me strength for today.. I will not talk it away.. Just for a moment.. It will burn through the clouds.. and shine down on me.	[reply]
Re^3: Pulling first 10 characters out of string? by Anonymous Monk on Dec 13, 2004 at 20:29 UTC
Neither "$x =~/^(.{10})/;" nor "$x =~/^(\d{10})/;" seem to work. When I print them out, I still have 11 characters. A little more info. The variable has already been set, to a string with 10 or more digits. I want to reset the value to just the first 10 digits. This is what I tried: $x = "12345678901"; $x =~ /^(\d{10})/; ( I also tried $x =~ /^(.{10})/; ) print "$x\n"; This still prints "12345678901", instead of "12345678900". I'll look at the substr doc. Thanks!	[reply]
Re^4: Pulling first 10 characters out of string? by Eimi Metamorphoumai (Deacon) on Dec 13, 2004 at 20:40 UTC
Re^4: Pulling first 10 characters out of string? by ysth (Canon) on Dec 13, 2004 at 20:34 UTC
Re: Pulling first 10 characters out of string? by hmerrill (Friar) on Dec 13, 2004 at 16:07 UTC
And here's a snippet from 'perldoc perl': `perlre Perl regular expressions, the rest of the story perlreref Perl regular expressions quick reference` [download] So, to read the perldocs on perlre, just do `perldoc perlre` [download] at a command prompt.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Pulling first 10 characters out of string? by nedals (Deacon) on Dec 13, 2004 at 21:48 UTC
use strict; my $x = "12345678901234"; # This evalutes the regex and prints the result print $x =~ /^(\d{10})/; print "\n"; $x = "12345678901234"; # This evaluates the regex but the result is not assigned anywhere. So + you get back $x $x =~ /^(\d{10})/; print "$x\n"; $x = "12345678901234"; # This evaluates the regex and assigns the result to $y my ($y) = $x =~ /^(\d{10})/; print "$y\n"; $x = "12345678901234"; # This perform a substitution, returning the result in $x $x =~ s/^(\d{10})\d$/$1/; print "$x\n"; [download] Update:* Did not see post by Eimi Metamorphoumai (below my depth setting) This is somewhat of a repeat.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Pulling first 10 characters out of string? by Anonymous Monk on Dec 13, 2004 at 16:16 UTC
if you really want to burn some cpu cycles use: `$x="1234567890asdfg"; while (length ($x) > 10) {chop($x)}; print $x;` [download] but otherwise use substr()	[reply] [d/l]