Regex doesn't wanna find the spaces :/

ultranerds has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi,

I'm trying to convert stuff like:

== test==

..to:

==test==

...and convert:

== test ==

..to:

==test==

Example string is:

my $string = q|
== Introduction==

--sub header--

A Montréal, il y a [[vieux Montréal]].

[[Montréal]]

[[testing weird tags]]
[[test]]

== Brief History==
asdfasfd
as
df
asf
d
asdf
as
fd
asf
dasfd
==Geography==
==Regions==
==Cities==
==Sights and Activites==
==Weather==
==Getting There==
==END Getting There==
|;
[download]

..and I've tried quite a few things:

$string =~ s|\=\=\s+?([a-z0-9_ &\[\]ÀÂÄàâäÇçÉÊÈËéêèëÏÌÎïìîÖÔÒöôòÜÛÙüûùA-Z?!;«»()"]+)\s+?\=\=|==$1==|ge;

...and:

$string =~ s|\=\=([\s+])([a-z0-9_ &\[\]ÀÂÄàâäÇçÉÊÈËéêèëÏÌÎïìîÖÔÒöôòÜÛÙüûùA-Z?!;«»()"]+)([\s+])\=\=|==$2==|sig;

..and even:

$string =~ s|\=\=\s+?([a-z0-9_ &\[\]ÀÂÄàâäÇçÉÊÈËéêèëÏÌÎïìîÖÔÒöôòÜÛÙüûùA-Z?!;«»()"]+)\s+?\=\=|FOO|sig;

..just to see if it matches .

None of these seem to do what I want though :/

Any suggestions?

BTW, the reason I have all the accented charachters, is due to the fact that this is for a French site, so needs to have all those charachters :)

TIA

Andy

Comment on Regex doesn't wanna find the spaces :/ Select or Download Code

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Re: Regex doesn't wanna find the spaces :/ by Corion (Patriarch) on Jun 24, 2009 at 10:25 UTC
`$string =~ s\|\=\=\s+?([a-z0-9_ &\[\]ÀÂÄàâäÇçÉÊÈËéêèëÏÌÎïìîÖÔÒöôòÜÛÙüûù +A-Z?!;«»()"]+)\s+?\=\=\|==$1==\|ge;` [download] In your input data there is no string that has both, whitespace at the start and at the end. Maybe you want `\s*` instead of `\s+?` ? Note that appending a `?` modifier is likely useless your case anyway, as you want to remove all whitespace before/after the `==`, so it doesn't make sense to make that removal non-greedy.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Regex doesn't wanna find the spaces :/ by ultranerds (Hermit) on Jun 24, 2009 at 10:43 UTC
Thanks, works perfectly :)	[reply]
Re: Regex doesn't wanna find the spaces :/ by davorg (Chancellor) on Jun 24, 2009 at 10:30 UTC
Aren't you making it more complex than it needs to be? What's wrong with just: `$string =~ s/==\s(.+?)\s==/==$1==/g;` [download] -- See the Copyright notice on my home node. Perl training courses	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Regex doesn't wanna find the spaces :/ by ultranerds (Hermit) on Jun 24, 2009 at 10:44 UTC
I tried that, and didn't seem to work =) Cheers Andy	[reply]
Re^3: Regex doesn't wanna find the spaces :/ by ikegami (Patriarch) on Jun 24, 2009 at 13:47 UTC
You are mistaken. You probably didn't have the "?".	[reply]
Re: Regex doesn't wanna find the spaces :/ by johngg (Canon) on Jun 24, 2009 at 14:43 UTC
You can use look-around assertions to avoid the need for captures. You might want to anchor the assertions to the start and end of the string depending on your data. `$string =~ s{(?: (?<===) \s+ \| \s+ (?===) )}{}gx;` [download] I hope this is of interest. Cheers, JohnGG	[reply] [d/l]