I have a string that looks like this:

8 changes by 4 users: user1 user2 user3 user4

or...

1 change by user1

That first example can change... number of changes, number of users, and the names. The second one is always the same format.

I want to be able to extract the names in the first example, using matching. (I can't use named groups, stuck in PERL 5.08 hell). I've gotten as far as determining the count for number of users and then building a regex to extract them all. My problem is that I don't know how to address the results in a foreach to then extract the user names. How do I address the results of the matching in a loop? I want to be able to foreach $counter (3..($3)) (I know $1 and $2 are the # of changes and # of users) and then get the other matches using $counter as the subscript?

In reply to Dynamic matching by flybd5

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.