in reply to Regex question

Here's one ugly way:

UPDATE: UGLIER than I realized; see Roy Johnson's below

use strict;
use warnings;

use vars qw ($foo $bar @bar);

$foo = 'var-a numeric (10,0) = NULL, var-b char (10) = NULL';

@bar = split /([^(,)].*,)+/, $foo; 
        # [^(,)]... happens to work here, but is NOT a generally appli
+cable approach!

foreach $bar(@bar) {
  print "$bar\n";
}

[download]
OUTPUT: 
var-a numeric (10,0) = NULL,
 var-b char (10) = NULL

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: Regex question
by Roy Johnson (Monsignor) on Oct 20, 2005 at 18:06 UTC
    Not only ugly, it doesn't match the OP's spec. It matches everything from the first non-special character through the last comma. Try it with 
    $foo = 'var-a numeric (10,0) = NULL, var-b char (10) = NULL, var-c dum
+my (1, 5)';

    [download]
    Since you're specifying a capture group, you're probably better trying for a m//g style capture, rather than using split. Like so: 
    my $str = 'var-a numeric (10,0) = NULL, var-b char (10) = NULL, var-c 
+dummy (1, 5)';
my @bits = $str =~
 /(?:^|,)    # Match starting at beginning of string or a comma
  (      # Capture
   (?:      # group of
    [^(,]   #  non-parens 
    |       #  or
    \(.*?\) #  open-paren to close-paren
   )*       # as many times as possible
  )/gx;
print ">$_<\n" for @bits;

    [download]
    Caution: Contents may have been coded under pressure.
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