regex prob

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

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: regex prob by Joost (Canon) on May 12, 2005 at 18:03 UTC
well... in perl's regex system that can be simplified to `[A-Za-z0-9]<br>` [download] How much further this can be improved depends on what you want to match :-) "What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"	[reply] [d/l]
Re: regex prob by Fletch (Bishop) on May 12, 2005 at 18:05 UTC
Perhaps if you explained what the frell you were trying to do with this someone might could give you an answer (well besides telling you that `{1}` is pretty much superfluous as the character class by definition will match exactly one of any of those characters anyhow).	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: regex prob by dave_pl (Sexton) on May 12, 2005 at 18:13 UTC
ok i see that you mean the problem is i don`t know the data it should match this is part of an ocr engine that gets data from a tiff image.... Thank you for your replies...	[reply]
Re: regex prob by Adrade (Pilgrim) on May 13, 2005 at 01:27 UTC
It turns out that you can just write `\w` - that matches any alphanumeric character just once. It is identical to your expr above. -Adam Update: Of course, if the `<br>` above was intentional, that would go just after your `\w`.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: regex prob by Eimi Metamorphoumai (Deacon) on May 13, 2005 at 04:04 UTC
`\w` also includes `_` (the underscore character). In most places it really doesn't matter, but it is a minor difference.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: regex prob by Adrade (Pilgrim) on May 13, 2005 at 06:54 UTC
Actually didn't realize that! Thanks! Best, -Adam	[reply]