Re: Regex not greedy enough

Thanks for the comments;
Snax - you're right, I was using the opposite switch to the one I meant, but I still have the same greed problems.
Japhy - This is new to me and it looks like the kind of solution I was after. However ?= matches nothing as (?=^ {3}\w), and I can't use \n, since then I skip my first record.

Any more ideas?
BTW: the 'record1' string is actually the first field of the record; it could be anything beginning with a \w

oh yeah, here's my test source:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my($infile,@records);

while(<DATA>) {$infile.=$;}

@records = (split(/(?=^ {3}\w)/,$infile); #returns whole list
#@records = ($infile =~ m/(^ {3}\w.*?)/sg); #returns only up to \w

print join("\n========\n",@records);

__DATA__
   record1
    field2 2345
   record2
   record3
    field1 GAGGA
    field2 7848
    field2a 5m
[download]

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Re: Re: Regex not greedy enough by japhy (Canon) on Nov 17, 2000 at 19:16 UTC
It won't match `(?=^ANYTHING)` at any place but the very beginning of the string unless you have the `/m` modifier on in the regex, which allows `^` to match after newlines. Ohhhhhh. I didn't think you meant ALL the text was indented, I thought you meant the 'field' parts where. Well then, to make it work with such data: `my $code; { local $/; $code = <DATA> } # fast "slurping" @records = split /\n (?=\w)/, $code; for (@records) { print ">>$_<<\n"; } __DATA__ japhy DALnet regular Regex Prince merlyn Perl Hacker O'Reilly Author Mark_Dominus IAQ Author ArrayHashMonster Creator` [download] `japhy`... Perl Hacker and Regex Prince	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: Regex not greedy enough by snax (Hermit) on Nov 17, 2000 at 19:01 UTC
Use japhy's suggestion and add a newline to your string: `@records = split /(?=\nrecord)/, ("\n" . $data);` [download] ...that way you get the necesary first newline in the regex for the first record. Crude, but effective :)	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: Regex not greedy enough by Fastolfe (Vicar) on Nov 17, 2000 at 20:25 UTC
If you want to capture to the end of the line, in `/m` mode, `$` anchors at the end of a line. In `/s` mode, `^` matches at the beginning of the string and `$` matches at the end. So maybe you did want `/m`. Of course, you can also just do something like these: `while (<DATA>) { my ($key, $value) = /(\S+) (.*)/ or next; # or: my ($key, $value) = split; # or: (undef, $key, $value) = split(/\s+/, $_, 3); $hash{$key} = $value; # or: push(@{$hash{$key}}, $value); }` [download] Untested, but you might get some ideas from that.	[reply] [d/l] [select]