in reply to Eugh, regex :(

Hi,

your title could be a bit more descriptive, even more as you do not explain what you are aiming at. What are you trying to cut out of that HTML-code? Also - your error message says =~ m%..., but your code reads =~ s%... which - for me - spits out a different error message. However, to me it is not clear what you want to do.

Another point: Parsing HTML source code with regexes is error prone and I would strongly suggest one of the parsers like HTML::Parser and it's derivatives, but this here seems to be some pseudo-code for forums etc - I have no idea if there are modules to parse that...

Regards,
svenXY

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Re^2: Eugh, regex :(
by moritz (Cardinal) on Mar 25, 2009 at 09:51 UTC
    but this here seems to be some pseudo-code for forums etc - I have no idea if there are modules to parse that

    May I recommend Parse::BBCode by tinita?

    (Disclaimer: I'm a bit biased because I wrote a few tests for that module, and discussed some design questions with the author).

[reply]
      >>May I recommend Parse::BBCode by tinita? <<

      This is for some forum software already - so when I get the data, it comes as BBCode, so no point converting back/forth :) Just need to get rid of the damn URL stuff =)

      Cheers

      Andy
[reply]
        I know that the documentation says that this module converts BBCode to HTML, but it also lets you modify the parse tree, and convert it back to bbcode with the raw_text method.
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Re^2: Eugh, regex :(
by parv (Parson) on Mar 25, 2009 at 09:48 UTC
    this here seems to be some pseudo-code for forums etc - I have no idea if there are modules to parse that
    Of course, there is at least one: Parse::RecDescent (just needs to be whipped up in shape).
[reply]
Re^2: Eugh, regex :(
by ultranerds (Hermit) on Mar 25, 2009 at 09:52 UTC
    Hi,

    All this is aiming to do, is change stuff like:

    [URL=http://img207.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc03598vt7.jpg][IMG]http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/2964/dsc03598vt7.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

    ..to:

    [IMG]http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/2964/dsc03598vt7.jpg[/IMG]

    (i.e remove the URL stuff)

    Cheers

    Andy
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      Quick and dirty one line example. you need to escape the [] in the substitution. 
       
perl -e '$post_message="[URL=http://img207.imageshack.us/my.php?image=
+dsc03598vt7.jpg][IMG]http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/2964/dsc03598
+vt7.jpg[/IMG][/URL]"; $post_message =~ s|^.*?\Q[img]\E([\?\%\:\/a-zA-
+Z0-9_\-\.]+)\Q[/img]\E.*$|\[img\]$1\[/img\]|sig;print "$post_message\
+n";'

      [download]
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[d/l]
      My regex was a bit different. find [URL..blah] or [/URL..blah] and delete them with substitution. 
      #!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my $example = '[URL=http://img207.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc03598v
+t7.jpg][IMG]http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/2964/dsc03598vt7.jpg[/
+IMG][/URL]';

print "$example \n";
$example =~ s/\[\/*URL.*?\]//g;
print $example;

#prints
[URL=http://img207.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc03598vt7.jpg][IMG]htt
+p://img207.imageshack.us/img207/2964/dsc03598vt7.jpg[/IMG][/URL] 

[IMG]http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/2964/dsc03598vt7.jpg[/IMG]

      [download]
      Update:I recommend Jeffrey Friedl's "Mastering Regular Expressions". This a "classic". But I figure this like nuclear weapons! The vast majority of regex problems can be solved by shooting the problem 1x or 2x or maybe even 3x with simplex regex'es in a sequence. Also I've found that the performance can be just as fast as a single complex regex (and sometimes faster)!
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