Re4: Is there an InString-like function?

As was already pointed out, this if ($var =~ /^[qw(Smith Jones Schmidtz)]/) doesn't work as it just creates a character class equivalent to [SmithJonescdz] - which just compares to the first character of $var. Two solutions:

my @names = qw(Smith Jones Schmidtz);
my $pattern = join '|', @names;

if ($var =~ /^(?:$pattern)/)

# or quicker
if ($var =~ /^Smith/ || $var =~ /^Jones/ || $var =~ /^Schmidtz/)
[download]

-- Hofmator

Comment on Re4: Is there an InString-like function? Select or Download Code

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Re: Re4: Is there an InString-like function? by Anonymous Monk on Jul 24, 2001 at 17:08 UTC
so is `/^(?:$pattern)/` faster than just `/^($pattern)/`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re6: Is there an InString-like function? by Hofmator (Curate) on Jul 24, 2001 at 17:19 UTC
so is /^(?:$pattern)/ faster than just /^($pattern)/ Yes, it is. The normal parentheses capture the match inside into the variable $1 (or $2, $3, ...) and so they have to do extra work copying the characters. Both types of parentheses do grouping. But my solution used first an alternation inside the regex and then second a logical or to combine the result of different regexes. The result is the same but the second method is faster. -- Hofmator	[reply]