Your pattern is doing a greedy match, so (.*) matches everything from "LCD" to the end, including trailing whitespace. The regex is still happy because the \s*$ at the end is satisfied by matching nothing.

Try m/^\s*(\S*)/ instead. No need to add the optional whitespace match at the end of the pattern as long as you know you only want to match up to (but not including) the first (optional) whitespace.

If all you want to do is grab the second field LCD-S you should try this: $BKSIC_MODEL[$i] = (split(' ', $line))[1]; If you're actually trying to grab all of the fields and use them to populate the array @BKSIC_MODEL then try this: @BKSIC_MODEL = split(' ', $line); see perlfunc:split

buckaduck

($BKSIC_MODEL[$i] = substr ($line, 3, 7)) =~ s/^\s*(\S*)\s*$/$1/;
[download]

Nope. The return value of an s/// is not the changed string, but the true/false success value.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

I think s/// return the number of modifications issued. Using s/// whitout g modificator, result to return true/false but... saying 0/1 is more sharp ( scuse me for this effrontery master ;)

_______________________
Please, don't hurt me !

Then I thought "problem with the assignment binding tighter than the pattern match operator" - but that doesn't seem to be true, either.

Then I pondered "could it be the list context of the match?" I'm still not sure if that's an issue or not.

So, in the spirit of "give a man a fish..." (or, light him on fire, depending on your persepective), I'll offer the following somewhat generic advice when faced with code like this:

1. Break the single statement into multiple steps:

   my $bit_o_line = substr ($line, 3, 7);
   $bit_o_line =~ m/^\s*(.*)\s*$/;
   $BKSIC_MODEL[$i] = $1;
   [download]

2. Use the debugger to see if things are doing what you expect at each step. You can always go back and recombine the lines into one shorter line after you've debugged it, and no one is ever the wiser. :-)

Peace,
-McD

my $bit_o_line = substr ($line, 3, 7);
$bit_o_line =~ m/^\s*(.*)\s*$/;
$BKSIC_MODEL[$i] = $1;
[download]

This is pretty much what he did do, and it doesn't work. It might help to change the regex slightly:

my $bit_o_line = substr ($line, 3, 7);
$bit_o_line =~ m/^\s*(\S+)\s*$/;
$BKSIC_MODEL[$i] = $1;
[download]

But it's still cumbersome compared to some of the earlier suggestions. If you must do it this way, why not follow the method in the FAQ:

my $BKSIC_MODEL[$i] = substr ($line, 3, 7);
$BKSIC_MODEL[$i] =~ s/^\s+//;
$BKSIC_MODEL[$i] =~ s/\s+$//;
[download]

buckaduck

buckaduck writes:

This is pretty much what he did do, and it doesn't work.

I think it half works. He's getting caught by the greedy *, which explain the trailing space on his match, but I don't see how he got a leading space. Anytime I scratch my head like that on my own code, I fall back to a technique like the one I suggested.

All your suggestions are great - and as usual, TMTOWTDI - but I was hoping in my response to point akm2 towards ways he could help himself more, now and in the future. Maybe if he came up with something new, he'd post it back here.

Peace,
-McD