What does this mean: 'I strip all spaces and stuff out of the string upfront.' ???

Make whitesspace optional with \s* and add a few more tests:

my @valid_strings = ( ['240 x 240 x 2/3600', 'Sample'], ['10000 x 240 x 2/3600', 'Max number'], ['1 x 240 x 2/3600', 'Min number'], ['120x240x2/3600', 'Number sans whitespace'], ['120x240x2 / 3600', 'Fraction with whitespace'], ); my $number = qr/10000|[1-9]\d{0,3}/; my $valid = qr{\b$number\s*x\s*$number\s*x\s*$number\s*/\s*$number\b} +; #my $valid = qr{\A$number\s*x\s*$number\s*x\s*$number\s*/\s*$number\z +}; #my $valid = qr{^$number\s*x\s*$number\s*x\s*$number\s*/\s*$number$}; my @invalid_strings = ( ['240 * 240 x 2/3600', 'Missing operator'], ['10001 x 240 x 2/3600', 'number exceeds max'], ['100 x 10001 x 2/3600', 'number exceeds max'], ['100 x 10001 x 2/10001', 'number exceeds max'], ['240x240x10001/3600', 'number exceeds max'], ['0 x 240 x 2/3600', 'number less than minimum'], ['240 x 240 x 2/0', 'Cannot divide by zero'], ['240 x 240 x 0/3600', 'Numerator cannot be zero'], );

In reply to Re^2: Regex question by perlboy_emeritus
in thread Regex question by Umdurman

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.