How do I get only one item out of attribute?

mr_evans2u has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

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Re: How do I get only one item out of attribute? by imp (Priest) on Aug 21, 2006 at 16:28 UTC
The easiest way is to use a regular expression. `my $dn = 'corpid=xxxxxx,ou=people,o=corp'; my ($ou) = $dn =~ /ou=([^,]*)/; print "ou = $ou\n";` [download] You could also create a hash of the tokens like this if you need to test other values: `my $dn = 'corpid=xxxxxx,ou=people,o=corp'; my %tokens = map {split /=/} split /,/, $dn; print "ou = $tokens{ou}\n";` [download] This approach first splits the $dn variable into pairs of this form: corpid=xxxxxx ou=people o=corp It then splits each of those pairs by the '=', which results in this list: corpid, xxxxxx, ou, people, o, corp Which is equivalent to defining a hash like this: `my %tokens = ( corpid => 'xxxxxx', ou => 'people', o => 'corp', );` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: How do I get only one item out of attribute? by izut (Chaplain) on Aug 21, 2006 at 17:18 UTC
Another hint is use the following, which I think is more readable :-) `my $dn = 'corpid=xxxxxx,ou=people,o=corp'; my ($ou) = $dn =~ /ou=(.?),/; print "ou = $ou\n";` [download] From `perldoc perlre`: Sometimes minimal matching can help a lot. Imagine you’d like +to match everything between "foo" and "bar". Initially, you write somet +hing like this: $_ = "The food is under the bar in the barn."; if ( /foo(.)bar/ ) { print "got <$1>\n"; } Which perhaps unexpectedly yields: got <d is under the bar in the > That’s because "." was greedy, so you get everything between t +he first "foo" and the last "bar". Here it’s more effective to use mini +mal matching to make sure you get the text between a "foo" and the +first "bar" thereafter. if ( /foo(.?)bar/ ) { print "got <$1>\n" } got <d is under the > [download] Igor 'izut' Sutton your code, your rules.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: How do I get only one item out of attribute? by mscerra (Monk) on Aug 21, 2006 at 16:39 UTC
The simplest way is to use split. `my @results = split /,/, $branch; my $desiredAtt = $results[1];` [download] If you want the returned value to only be the ou value you might look into making it return a hash of hashes. Your return hash would point to another hash. The sub hash would have three keys, corpid, ou and o. Then you could call `$return{"dn"}{"ou"}` to only get the ou field.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: How do I get only one item out of attribute? by mr_evans2u (Novice) on Aug 21, 2006 at 18:30 UTC
thanks, mscerra that worked!	[reply]
Re: How do I get only one item out of attribute? by swampyankee (Parson) on Aug 21, 2006 at 17:56 UTC
If you are absolutely certain that the format position of this attribute won't change, my preference (like mscerra's) is to use split. Being slightly neurotic, I'd check whether the return value actually exists before printing it. If you're less certain about the postion, but still certain about the general formatting, a hash may be your best bet. This seems close to the spirit of your post. Something like this code may be a reasonable start: `#!perl use warnings; use strict; my %attr; %attr = split(/\s[,=]\s/,'corpid=xxxxxx,ou=people,o=corp'); if exists $attr{ou} { print "value for ou is $attr{ou}\n"; } else { print "No value defined for ou...this may be an error\n"; }` [download] What's happening here is fairly simple: the string is being split on equal signs and commas, with the items to the left of the equal signs being used as the keys to a hash. emc Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards. Vernon Sanders Law	[reply] [d/l]