my $string = 'test("test ... bla bla bla")';

      $string =~ s/test\("test/test\("GC_test/;
[download]

That was the first thing I tried. The problem with that was, the strings weren't modified. It remained test("test.
I don't know if this info is relevant, but I will share with you if it helps. I am using active perl on windows 2000.
The regex I tried to use came from another site on active perl. I can't remember which site it was from though. There it was mentioned to put the paren inside a open and close paren and quote the paren in the string. i.e. (\()
By the way I did try your solution just in case. But I still have my initial result. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

Are you reading these in from a file and seeing that their not changed in the file ?

If so, try this recipe for in-place editing

prompt> perl -i -pe 's/"t/"GC_t/' file_to_be_changed.txt
[download]

The -i flag tells perl to make changes (like regex substitutions) in the original file, dont make a backup

The -pe is two options joined together - -p is print every line in the supplied file back out to itself (thats what -i and -p together do - print every line back to the same file)

The -e tells perl to apply the regex to every line in the file - and hence the "t lines become "GC_t before being printed back out.

You can find more options like these in "perldoc perlrun", or Perl Command-Line Options.

Cheers

...it is better to be approximately right than precisely wrong. - Warren Buffet

with perl 5.8.4 on linux(debian unstable), the following code

      1 #!/usr/bin/perl
      2 
      3 use strict;
      4 
      5 my $string = 'test("test ... bla bla bla")';
      6 $string =~ s/test\("test/test\("GC_test/;
      7 
      8 print $string."\n";
[download]

return test("GC_test ... bla bla bla")

perhaps the probleme is your verion of perl

But assuming that an open paren is to be preserved, then you have to backslash it. Instead, in the regex shown you have backslashed a close paren. That's at least part of what is driving you crazy.

jimk

The objective is to replace the following string:

test("test

with test("GC_test

i.e. put GC_ before the second "test". Hope that answers your query.

As well backslashing the open paren didn't work. That was my initial solution. But I did try your suggestion but no luck.

Please help; and thanks

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
my $str_in = 'test("test';
my $str_out = $str_in;
#$str_out =~ s/"t/"GC_t/;
$str_out =~ s/"/"GC_/;
print "string 1: $str_in\n";
print "string 2: $str_out\n";
[download]

produces

string 1: test("test
string 2: test("GC_test
[download]

Am I missing something here?

Update: Just match the double quote (original match commented out above). That works just well, assuming there is only one double quote in the string.

warn("string matches") if $string =~ /test\("test/;
[download]

Hi, Try it simple

my $str = 'test("test..hai")';
$str =~ s#\Qtest("test\E#test("GC_test#gsi;
print "$str";
[download]

Maybe you could try s/(test\(\W)(test)/$1GC_$2/ as the quotation mark might not be the same in the regexp and in the string.