have problem in variable matching and substitution

[yuenlok]

Hi,

I need to replace strings in a URL when the date key value for example "Nov18" matches variable $DATE, the original strings look like:
newsletter.mydomain/;kw=frNov18tracking
newsletter.mydomain/;kw=engNov18tracking

what I need is something like:
mydomain.dart/nlsample

Here is the what I used but it didn't work out: $DATE=Nov18
s/newsletter\.mydomain\/\;kw=[eng|fr]$DATEtracking/mydomain\.dart\/nlsample/g;

With this substitution I got :
mydomain.dart/nlsamplengNov18tracking
mydomain.dart/nlsamplerNov18tracking

so [eng|fr]Nov18tracking became [ng|r]Nov18tracking and was append to the target string. Can anybody tell me what's wrong with my substitution? Thanks very much!

 

[dummy33]

will this take care of it?

$_ = "newsletter.mydomain/;kw=frNov18tracking";

$DATE="Nov18";

print "$_\n";

s/^.*$DATE.*$/mydomain\.dart\/nlsample/g;

print "$_\n";

 

[dummy33]

oops.. forgot the eng/fr

s/^.*(eng|fr)$DATE.*$/mydomain\.dart\/nlsample/g;

parens will look for eng or fr only if grouped together -
brackets will treat each character inside individually.
[eng|fr] = e or n or g or |(actual pipe character)or f or r

the ^ and $ anchor the beginning and end, so it will replace the whole string.

 

[yuenlok]

Hi Dummy33,

I replaced [eng|fr] with (eng|fr) and use parens to identify $DATE:

s/newsletter\.mydomain\/\;kw=(eng|fr)($DATE)tracking/mydomain\.dart\/nlsample/g;

Now I get what I need. Thanks very much.

btw, I can't use ^.* and .*$ to replace the whole string because the other part of the URL is important to me ;-)