substitutions with unknown data

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

I have a chatterbox script that let's the admin add custom emoticons to the system and am having problems getting the s/// to work.

The FACE can be ANYTHING pretty much. It can be a word, a series of letters and numbers, some characters like *help* or <help> or pretty much anything. The only thing that's required is the FACE be separated by a space on each side so it doesn't subsitute things like "face" in the word "preface".

id is just a number name is the name the called it (ie: SmileyFace) location is the URL of the image of the name face is the code to s/// if it is found (ie: :) , :( , *hug* ) Right now it's not s/// anything and just spits back the whatever you put in. If you type in "Hello there! :) " it prints it back instead of the emoticon.

Any ideas what I goofed?

I removed \b as suggested in the room but that didn't change the output. I tried removing \Q and \E but it errored out due to a quantifier problem since I have an emoticon face *crying*. THE SCRIPT: this is a basic chatterbox script, much like PM has, that let's people post messages to the site with each other.


#######
# connecting to the DB again so we can filter emoticons
#######
my $data = qq(SELECT id, name, location, face FROM emoticons);
my $sth = $dbh->prepare($data);
$sth->execute() or die $dbh->errstr;

my ($id, $name, $location, $face);
$sth->bind_columns(\$id, \$name, \$location, \$face);
foreach my $line (reverse @keep)
{
   my ($username, $message, $date, $ip) = split(/<!!>/, $line);
   while ($sth->fetch)
   {
      $message =~ s|\b\Q$face\E\b| <img src="$location" alt="$name"> |
+gi;
   
   }
   if ($message =~ m|^/me|i)
   {
      $message =~ s|^/me||i;
      print qq(<b><i><a href="#" TITLE="Message sent on $date by $ip">
+$username</a></i></b> <i>$message</i><br>);
   }
   else
   {
      print qq(<b><a href="#" TITLE="Message sent on $date by $ip">$us
+ername</a>:</b> $message<br>);
   }
}
[download]

"Age is nothing more than an inaccurate number bestowed upon us at birth as just another means for others to judge and classify us"

sulfericacid

Comment on substitutions with unknown data Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: substitutions with unknown data (\b is \w not \s) by tye (Sage) on Mar 28, 2005 at 19:58 UTC
\b finds boundaries between \w and \W characters. What you want instead is: `/(?<!\S)\Q$face\E(?!\S)/` [download] which means that the face can't be preceeded by a non-space characters [like `(?<=\s)` except it allows $face to appear at the front of the message] and can't be followed by a non-space characters [like `(?=\s\|$)`]. - tye	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: substitutions with unknown data (\b is \w not \s) by sulfericacid (Deacon) on Mar 28, 2005 at 20:37 UTC
Thanks for that code. I inserted it but I'm still having the same problem. I'll keep using it though since it's definitely better than what I was using. I insterted a little test to do a printout of the faces to make sure we are using the right data. I added `my ($username, $message, $date, $ip) = split(/<!!>/, $line); while ($sth->fetch) { $message =~ s\|(?<!\S)\Q$face\E(?!\S)\| <img src="$location" alt=" +$name"> \|gi; print "$face<br>"; }` [download] And the output was `Crying :) :( :P :O hug flower ;) evil love yawn 0<- albie thumb angel cool pix action test test: oh pix: emoticon :) test pix: emoticon :) test test: hug test: hug test: hug test: hug test: test :) here hug test test: test :) here hug test` [download] So the $face data IS right but it's still not doing any of the s/// in the data. Any other suggesitons? Thanks. "Age is nothing more than an inaccurate number bestowed upon us at birth as just another means for others to judge and classify us" sulfericacid	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: substitutions with unknown data (\b is \w not \s) by tye (Sage) on Mar 28, 2005 at 21:14 UTC
This wouldn't show if you had spaces in your "face" strings, for example. For a situation like this, I'd probably just use "perl -d", set a break point at the loop and use "x $message" and "x $face" a couple of times. But you can also use something like Data::Dumper to get some more precise information about your data. - tye	[reply]
Re: substitutions with unknown data by Roy Johnson (Monsignor) on Mar 28, 2005 at 19:59 UTC
You don't want the \b, you want to match whitespace or start/end of string. `$message =~ s\|(?:^\|\s)\Q$face\E(?:$\|\s)\| <img src="$location" alt="$na +me"> \|gi;` [download] Caution: Contents may have been coded under pressure.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: substitutions with unknown data by tlm (Prior) on Mar 28, 2005 at 23:14 UTC
I think what's happening is that you're exhausting your `$sth->fetch` on the first input line, so that in subsequent lines, the `while ($sth->fetch)` loop doesn't even execute. What I think you have to do is slurp all your DB records into some array `@emoticons` (or whatever you perfer), and then replace the `while ($sth->fetch)` with `for my $emoticon (@emoticons) { my ($id, $name, $location, $face) = @$emoticon; # do your substitution, with the fixes already given # to you in other comments }` [download] the lowliest monk	[reply] [d/l] [select]