#pull out only the first 15 words from the pubText field 
@copy = ( split ' ', $data->{ pubText } )[ 0 .. 14 ];
[download]

TIMTOWTDI (clumsier, but only slightly different):

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
# 777834

my (@copy, $copy, $i);
@copy = split (/\s/, <DATA>, 16);

for (0..14) {
    print $copy[$_] . " ";
}

__DATA__
Pull out only the first 15 words from the pubText field. This is where
+ I need suggestions, the code below does not work.
[download]

/\s/ should be /\s+/ unless the empty string between two spaces counts as a word.

That certainly is the right way to go... and cheap at the price. ++!

Some minor quibbles though:

1. OP offers no indication of actually having double spaces between sentences but that is a not uncommon occurance, which is why your observation is so valuable: Put two spaces rather than one in "...field. This..." in my __DATA__ and my split pattern does NOT DWIM) whereas yours does.
2. The sample I used, from the OP, has no doubled spaces.
3. Whether or not the db's text field has doubled spaces depends on how it was created. If it was simply scraped from a webpage, odds are that it has none, since browsers (and I believe, browser-substitutes) do not render but one in any string of literal whitespaces (character entities are, of course, a differnt matter).

For some reason, your "...unless the empty string between two spaces counts as a word." does not parse to anything plausible (possible blind spot?) for me. FMI, is there a way to persuade split to treat the empty string between two spaces as a word boundary (\b) or a not_word boundary (\B)?

Update: Oversight addendum: "the empty string between two spaces" is a position (despite cf perldoc -f split at "As a special case for "split", using the empty pattern "//"....")

use strict;

my $string
    = 'one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve 
+thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty'
+;

{
    local $, = ', ';
    print first_x( $string, 10 ), "\n";
}

print scalar first_x( $string, 10 ), "\n";

sub first_x {
    return
        wantarray
        ? ( split /\s+/, $_[0], $_[1] + 1 )[ 0 .. $_[1] - 1 ]
        : join ' ', ( split /\s+/, $_[0], $_[1] + 1 )[ 0 .. $_[1] - 1 
+];
}
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one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 
one two three four five six seven eight nine ten
[download]

Going off on a bit of a tangent, it just occurred to me that it should be possible to write the first_x function recursively, to reduce code duplication. Ie:

sub first_x {
    return
        wantarray
        ? ( split /\s+/, $_[0], $_[1] + 1 )[ 0 .. $_[1] - 1 ]
        : join ' ', first_x( @_ );
}
[download]

Maybe a similar pattern could be applied in other circumstances as well.

--
use JAPH;
print JAPH::asString();

I'm not particularly fond of the extra trip through the sub when we could use a lexical to store the data:

sub first_x {
    my @data = ( split /\s+/, $_[0], $_[1] + 1 )[ 0 .. $_[1] - 1 ];
    return
        wantarray
        ? @data
        : join ' ' , @data
        ;
}
[download]

then again, I don't like the 0..n slice. Why not just use pop?

sub first_x {
    my @data = split /\s+/, $_[0], $_[1] + 1 ;
    pop(@data); #throw away last element    
    return
        wantarray
        ? @data
        : join ' ' , @data
        ;
}
[download]

peace, spazm

text to text:

$data->{pubText} =~ /\A((?:\w+\s){14}\w+).+/;
my $text = $1 if defined $1;
# ...
[download]

hth,
PooLpi

Hi,

I guess you can try with mySQl string functions() , so that you can do it through your sql query itself instead of fetching all the values from the db.
- Raja

I wondered about that as well, but having had a look at the MySQL reference, I can't see anything that would do what the OP needs.

I'm no expert though. Is it possible? Can anyone enlighten?

--
use JAPH;
print JAPH::asString();