repeating patterns

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

suppose i have a string which looks like this:
(the . stands for a wildcard )


$string = a.foobara.foobara.foobara.bara.foobar x 100
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i want to extract a.foobar from this string everytime it happens but i dont want the a.shoebar to be part of my extraction.
when i do:

@array = ($string =~ m/(a.*?foobar)/gso);
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i match the string "a.bara.foobar". but i want a.bar (without a foo in front of bar) simply not to match! What is the proper re?

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Re: repeating patterns by Masem (Monsignor) on Mar 30, 2001 at 19:08 UTC
Remember that '.' is a special regex character, and if you want to match it specifically, you need to escape it. `@array = ($string =~ m/(a\.foobar)/gso);` [download] (Unless there's more to your question than it appears?) Dr. Michael K. Neylon - mneylon-pm@masemware.com \|\| "You've left the lens cap of your mind on again, Pinky" - The Brain	[reply] [d/l]
Re: repeating patterns by Anonymous Monk on Mar 30, 2001 at 19:49 UTC
let me clarify, the dot in the string just stands for a bunch of stuff which changes	[reply]
Re: Re: repeating patterns by arturo (Vicar) on Mar 30, 2001 at 20:15 UTC
OK, you have a string that has an unknown number of occurences of the pattern "a (something)foobara"; and you want to grab all of those instances. The tag in the middle can change; so the key is to use the fact that you can interpolate variables into a regex. `#since delimiter may contain special regex characters, # make sure you escape them my $delim = quotemeta("DELIMITER"); my @matches = $string =~ /a${delim}foobar/g;` [download] Will, I think, do what you want. But this might not get you what you want when you're dealing with real data, so beware. Philosophy can be made out of anything. Or less -- Jerry A. Fodor	[reply] [d/l]