Re: pattern match of first occurance

Your match (.+) is greedy so it will match as much as possible, i.e. up to the second </year>. Make it non-greedy with the addition of a question mark.

$ perl -E '
> $var = q{<x><year>2010<day>5</day></year><month>January</month> <day
+>31</day>, <year>2010</year></x>};
> say $1 if $var =~m{<year>(.+?)</year>};'
2010<day>5</day>
$
[download]

I hope this is helpful.

Cheers,

JohnGG

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Re^2: pattern match of first occurance by rdfield (Priest) on Jul 08, 2010 at 13:57 UTC
Or match only digits: `say $1 if $var =~m{<year>(\d+)</year>};` [download] rdfield	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: pattern match of first occurance by deMize (Monk) on Jul 08, 2010 at 20:47 UTC
Comment: Nope he said he's trying to get: 2010<day>5</day> Demize	[reply]
Re^4: pattern match of first occurance by rdfield (Priest) on Jul 15, 2010 at 15:06 UTC
Actually, no, he's not. The question was specifically why <year>.*</year> didn't match properly. rdfield	[reply]