Regex extracting a number from numbers and text

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

my $text = 'my model TT1986 is 6 months old";
#my $text = 'my model TT1986 is 12 months old";

    $text =~ /(\d?\d)/;
    print $1;
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I'm trying to extract the age digits only but it extracts the wrong digits (19) .

    $text =~ /^\b(\d?\d)/;
    print $1;
[download]

doesn't print anything. What's a girl supposed to do?? :)

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Re: Regex extracting a number from numbers and text by ikegami (Patriarch) on Oct 17, 2006 at 16:51 UTC
Very close. You are right to use `\b`. The problem is that you also used `^` which means "start of string". The number is not located at the start of the string. `$text =~ /\b(\d+)/` [download] Update: By the way, you shouldn't use `$1` unless you made sure the match succeeded. `if ($text =~ /\b(\d+)\b/) { print("Matched $1\n"); }` [download] Update: Other solutions: `# The first standalone number. $text =~ /\b(\d+)\b/` [download] `# By context. $text =~ /(\d+) months? old/` [download] `# The last number. $text =~ /^.*\b(\d+)/` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Regex extracting a number from numbers and text by Anonymous Monk on Oct 17, 2006 at 16:57 UTC
So near yet so far! Thanks for your help.	[reply]