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

Hi Monks, I am having a problem trying to remove the ('single quote) from the text here, my regular expression is ignoring it, any reason for that?
Here is the line I am using to remove or to try to remove the single quote from the text.
        $item->{'description'}=~s/\n//gms;
        $item->{'description'}=~s/'//gms; # Like in here - Benefit's -
+ I am trying to get rid of the single quote but it is not working.

[download]

Here is some data
<font size=2><b><a target="_blank" href="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailyn
+ews/rss/topstories/*http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/l
+atimests/20050210/ts_latimes/drugbenefitscostestimatessoarsurprise">D
+rug Benefit's Cost Estimates Soar, Surprise (Los Angeles Times)</a></
+b></font><br /><font size=1></font><br />

[download]

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Removing Single Quote Problem
by Roy Johnson (Monsignor) on Feb 10, 2005 at 18:57 UTC
    A better tool for removing characters when you don't need regular expressions is tr///. 
    $item->{'description'} =~ tr/\n'//d;

    [download]
    But your s/// expression should be removing it. Are you sure it's not a "smart quote"?
    Caution: Contents may have been coded under pressure.
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[d/l]
      Watch out for removing newlines willy-nilly. In HTML spans, a newline and a space are equivalent.

      Removingthe newlineswhere thereis noother whitespacewill givesome poorresults.

      --
      [ e d @ h a l l e y . c c ]

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Re: Removing Single Quote Problem
by hubb0r (Pilgrim) on Feb 10, 2005 at 18:55 UTC
    When I run your code as follows:

    #!/usr/local/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my $item    = {};

$item->{'description'}  = qq{<font size=2><b><a target="_blank" href="
+http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http://story.news.ya
+hoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/latimests/20050210/ts_latimes/drugbenefit
+scostestimatessoarsurprise">Drug Benefit's Cost Estimates Soar, Surpr
+ise (Los Angeles Times)</a></b></font><br /><font size=1></font><br /
+>};

$item->{'description'}  =~ s/'//gms;

print $item->{'description'};

---OUTPUT---
<font size=2><b><a target="_blank" href="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailyn
+ews/rss/topstories/*http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/l
+atimests/20050210/ts_latimes/drugbenefitscostestimatessoarsurprise">D
+rug Benefits Cost Estimates Soar, Surprise (Los Angeles Times)</a></b
+></font><br /><font size=1></font><br />

    [download]

    In what instance is it not working? Ps - even though there was only one single quote in your data, this code will also work without a problem with multiple single quotes due to the /g;
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[d/l]
Re: Removing Single Quote Problem
by phaylon (Curate) on Feb 10, 2005 at 19:22 UTC
    Another one without re's (Hm, I must be in mood for this..): 
    use warnings;
use strict;
my $text = "I think there's a quote in here..\n";
                                                                      
+          
my $p;
substr( $text, $p - 1, 1 ) = '' 
  while $p = index( $text, "'" ) + 1;
                                                                      
+          
print $text;

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[reply]
[d/l]
      Still having problems, here is more of the code
      foreach my $item (@{$rss->{'items'}}) {        
        
        next unless defined($item->{'title'}) && defined($item->{'link
+'}) && defined($item->{'description'});
        $i += 1;
        next if $i > $feedcount;
        
        $item->{'description'}=~s/\n//gms;
        #$item->{'description'} =~ tr/\n'//d;
        $item->{'description'}=~s/'//gms;

        $output .= "'<font size=2><b><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"$item
+->{'link'}\">$item->{'title'}</a></b></font><br /><font size=1>$item-
+>{'description'}</font><br />'+\n";
    }

      [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
        What problems? I would also recommend reading perlstyle 
        next unless defined($item->{'title'}) && defined($item->{'link
+'}) && defined($item->{'description'});

        [download]
        could be written as 
        next unless defined $item->{title}
  and defined $item->{link}
  and defined $item->{description};

        [download]
        Also, why are you setting $output after trying to strip the singlequotes?
        Ordinary morality is for ordinary people. -- A.C.
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[d/l]
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Re: Removing Single Quote Problem
by jpk236 (Monk) on Feb 10, 2005 at 19:00 UTC
    seems to work okay for me
    #!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my $text = "hi -- this has a ' in it and I want ' to go away";

$text =~ s/'//gms;

print "$text\n";

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    Output:
    hi -- this has a  in it and I want  to go away

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    - Justin
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[d/l]
[select]
Re: Removing Single Quote Problem
by Anonymous Monk on Feb 10, 2005 at 21:38 UTC 
      $item->{'description'}=~s/'//gms;

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    The /m and /s modifiers don't serve any purpose in this regex. To include them smacks of cargo cultism.
[reply]
[d/l]

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