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

Dear Monks,

I would like a regex that will pick out a string that does not contain a comma except where ", City of" or ", County of" is present.

I tried the following: 
 if ( $_ =~
       m/^([^,]+),([^,|,\sCity\sof|,\sCounty\sof]+),[\d|\.]+,[\d|\.]+,
+[\d|\.]+,[\d|\.]+,,[\d|\.]+,[\d|\.]+,[\d|\.]+,[\d|\.]+,,[\d|\.]+,[\d|
+\.]+,[\d|\.]+,[\d|\.]+/
     )
    {

[download]
without luck. Any help appreciated.

Update: I am working with a CSV file. However I am not sure if the CSV modules suggested below would get around the problem of commas existing where they shouldn't.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Anything that is not ',' except .... RegEx question
by McDarren (Abbot) on Feb 27, 2008 at 12:42 UTC
    I declare this to be an XY Problem.

    My guess would be that you have some CSV data where the data itself contains commas, and you are tying yourself in knots trying to parse it with a regex.

    If that is the case, then I would point you to something like Text::CSV

    - Darren

[reply]
      Hi,
      if it is really some cvs stuff, I'd also throw DBD::CSV in - it allows for working with csv files by using SQL statements. Quite cool IMHO.
      Regards,
      svenXY
[reply]
Re: Anything that is not ',' except .... RegEx question
by dave_the_m (Monsignor) on Feb 27, 2008 at 12:40 UTC
    It's a lot easier to do it using multiple patterns: 
    print "$_\n" if !/,/ or /, City of/ or /, County of/;

    [download]

    Dave.

[reply]
[d/l]
Re: Anything that is not ',' except .... RegEx question
by theorbtwo (Prior) on Feb 27, 2008 at 14:40 UTC

    Any decent CSV module will deal with commas embedded inside the data sections of CSV files.

    However, to *somewhat* more directly speak to the question you asked, instead of the question you should have asked, I think you've made a basic mistake with regexes. The inside of a [...] is a bunch of chars, not a bunch of strings, and certianly not another regex. [\d|\.] doesn't mean a digit or a dot, it means a digit, a pipe, or a dot. [\d.] would be a digit or a dot.

    Anyway, writing your own CSV parser isn't going to be the best way to solve this problem. Instead, use somebody else's CSV parser, then deal with the data you get back from it.

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
    A reply falls below the community's threshold of quality. You may see it by logging in.
Re: Anything that is not ',' except .... RegEx question
by Punitha (Priest) on Feb 27, 2008 at 12:47 UTC

    Hi Win, you can try like this also,

    use strict;

while(<DATA>){
    chomp;
    if(($_!~/,/i)||($_=~/,(?= (?:city of|country of))/i)){
        print "$_\n"
    }
}

    [download]

    Punitha

[reply]
[d/l]
    A reply falls below the community's threshold of quality. You may see it by logging in.
Re: Anything that is not ',' except .... RegEx question
by jdporter (Paladin) on Feb 27, 2008 at 14:38 UTC
    I am working with a CSV file. However I am not sure if the CSV modules suggested below would get around the problem of commas existing where they shouldn't.

    Why don't you at least try it, then? There's a good chance it will make you problem a lot simpler (because parsing CSV properly is harder than it looks), and in either case, you'll have learned something about the problem and about Perl.

    A word spoken in Mind will reach its own level, in the objective world, by its own weight
[reply]

      No, it's Win. He'll bull through his way, ignore the advice he asked for, and complain when his way doesn't work and we won't help him make it work. When it eventually dawns on him that he's going about it the wrong way he'll expect people here to hand him a working solution on a silver platter with a buttered scone on the side.

      Update: See? Did I call it or what . . .

      The cake is a lie.
      The cake is a lie.
      The cake is a lie.

[reply]

Back to Seekers of Perl Wisdom