Re: Pattern matching

If you mean line 'tom blah blah jonh' should match kind of match (eg blah blah can be anything) then this should do it.

m/(?<=tom).*(dick|harry|john)/
[download]

But i would think Joost had more readable suggestions.

Comment on Re: Pattern matching Download Code

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Re^2: Pattern matching by ikegami (Patriarch) on Jan 05, 2005 at 15:31 UTC
That doesn't work. Since you don't capture `.`, your look-behind is identical to `m/tom.(dick\|harry\|john)/`. You also can't put a regexp inside a look-behind, IIRC. `' tom harry ' =~ m/(?<=tom).(dick\|harry\|john)/ && print(1, $/); # + 1 ' harry tom ' =~ m/(?<=tom).(dick\|harry\|john)/ && print(2, $/); # + (nothing)` [download] Lookahead works, though `' tom harry ' =~ m/(?=.tom).(dick\|harry\|john)/ && print('A', $/); + # A ' harry tom ' =~ m/(?=.tom).(dick\|harry\|john)/ && print('B', $/); + # B` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: Pattern matching by Hena (Friar) on Jan 07, 2005 at 05:53 UTC
True. Didn't realize that you could get both sides with lookahead. But I was just trying to get the A part working :).	[reply]
Re^2: Pattern matching by Anonymous Monk on Jan 05, 2005 at 13:37 UTC
what is the significance of "?<=" in your code?	[reply]
Re^3: Pattern matching by reneeb (Chaplain) on Jan 05, 2005 at 13:52 UTC
look at perldoc perlre: `"(?<=pattern)"<br /> A zero-width positive look-behind assertion. For example, "/(?<=\t)\w+/" matches a word that follows a tab, without including the tab in $&. Works only for fixed-width look-behind.` [download]	[reply] [d/l]