regex help

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

hi monks,

can anyone help me out with this regex? i'm trying to create an array of values that are in a string.
i.e. the string "\"foo\"[MH] or \"bar\"[MH]" should return an array that looks like [ "foo", "bar" ].
here's what i have but it's being greedy:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;

my $term = "\"foo\"[MH] OR \"bar\"[MH]";
my @matches = ( $term =~ /\"(.+)?\"\[MH\]/ );

print $_,"\n" foreach (@matches);
[download]

any help would be appreciated.

cheers,
reagen

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Re: regex help by kyle (Abbot) on Jun 01, 2007 at 04:17 UTC
Two small changes will help. The new regex line is: `my @matches = ( $term =~ /\"(.?)\"\[MH\]/g );` [download] The first change is to make the capture non-greedy (from `(.+)?` to `(.?)`). The second change is to use the `/g` flag to collect all the matches, not just the first one. Have a look at perlre for all the gory details.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: regex help by sanPerl (Friar) on Jun 01, 2007 at 05:11 UTC
`(.+)?` and `(.+)` works same in your case, because `(.+)` forms a greedy pattern first and which nullifies the presence of `?`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: regex help by Samy_rio (Vicar) on Jun 01, 2007 at 04:17 UTC
Hi, Try now, `#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; my $term = "\"foo\"[MH] OR \"bar\"[MH]"; my @matches = $term =~ /(\"(.+)?\"\[MH\])/ ; print $_,"\n" foreach (@matches);` [download] Regards, Velusamy R. eval"print uc\"\\c$_\""for split'','j)@,/6%@0%2,`e@3!-9v2)/@\|6%,53!-9@2~j';	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: regex help by ikegami (Patriarch) on Jun 03, 2007 at 03:45 UTC
Your code produces the same output as the OP's code. You didn't fix anything.	[reply]
Re: regex help by blazar (Canon) on Jun 01, 2007 at 15:11 UTC
`my $term = "\"foo\"[MH] OR \"bar\"[MH]"; my @matches = ( $term =~ /\"(.+)?\"\[MH\]/ );` [download] As a side note you don't have to do double-quotes-quoting-acrobatics: just use single quotes or alternate delimiters (should you need interpolation or "\*" thingies). `my $term = '"foo"[MH] OR "bar"[MH]';` [download] or `my $term = qq\|"foo"[MH] OR "bar"[MH]\|;` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]