Re: So Simple, Yet no tutorial covers it

ok, i wrote this code, just a simple regex thing to extract the "Location" data. Here it is:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w

use LWP::Simple;

#program starts
$totalAdress = "http://www.foobar.com/htmlschuff/data.html";

$content = get($totalAdress) || die "doesn't seem to be a valid adress
+: $!";

#Location
$start = "<p><b>Location:</b>\n";
$end = "<p>";
if ($content =~ /\b$start\b(.*?)\b$end\b/) {
    $Location = $1;
    print $Location;
}
print "\ndone\n";
[download]

And it won't work. Now I'm a newbie, ok. So its probably that the regex cant take variables but I'm not sure. All i get when i use this code against a real page that has the same data as the original example and this is the program output:

$./thecode.pl

done
$
[download]

Any idea, I'm sure its some newbie mistake but it beats me.

Comment on Re: So Simple, Yet no tutorial covers it Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
(jeffa) Re: Re: So Simple, Yet no tutorial covers it by jeffa (Bishop) on Jan 22, 2001 at 07:47 UTC
Change your if conditional line with the regex to this: `if ($content =~ /$start\s(.?)\s*$end/) {` [download] you really don't have to have the word boundaries, and you should always expect possible white space. Remember, TIMTOWTDI Jeff L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L-- -R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR F--F--F--F--F--F--F--F-- (the triplet paradiddle)	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: Re: So Simple, Yet no tutorial covers it by ichimunki (Priest) on Jan 22, 2001 at 07:50 UTC
And take out .*? You probably want .+? Since this will grab at least one character for sure. Also, adding an else clause after the if would be a good way to notify the user if there is not match, or to provide a default location, like 'no location given'.	[reply]