Re: "Complete match" regexes

Use ^ and $ in your regex (for the beginning and the end of the line) :

while (<>) {
  if ( /^\w{5}\s\w{4}$/ ) { 
    print "This is a 5-letter word followed by a four-letter word\n";

  }
}
[download]

BTW: more details in perldoc perlre (it's a must read ;-)

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Re: Re: "Complete match" regexes by japhy (Canon) on Feb 02, 2001 at 20:42 UTC
You might want to use the `\z` anchor instead of the `$` anchor -- `\z` is explicit end-of-string, but `$` can match right before a newline at the end of a string. `japhy` -- Perl and Regex Hacker	[reply]
Re: Re: "Complete match" regexes by $code or die (Deacon) on Feb 02, 2001 at 20:47 UTC
If you aren't fussed about leading and trailing spaces, you can modify the regex thusly: `/^\s\w{5}\s\w{4}\s$/` [download] </code> Update: Yeah, I know the question was pretty explicit that he wanted to match exactly a 5 letter word followed by a 4 letter word. The question had already been answered so I posted this in case it's of use to anyone else. It happens occasionally that you think - I want a regex to allow x and and make it too unforgiving to allow for mistakes in user input. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the code I posted is incorrect? Update 2: Fastolfe pointed out that I used character classes when I didn't need them so I took them out. He was quite right - not sure why I used them, but I don't think they did any harm, I originally posted: `/^[\s]\w{5}\s\w{4}[\s]$/` $code or die Using perl at The Spiders Web	[reply] [d/l]