Pattern matching

[Buddyholly83]

I am being returned some data that looks like:

Set-Cookie: ASP.NET_SessionId=bir2jo45j0jev355wqdp0xed; path=/
X-AspNet-Version: 1.1.4322
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET

Result=OK
MessageIDs=f89fcc9b-b7ba-44a8-bebe-785302b6f136

The bit i am interested in is the Result and messageIDs lines. I can successfully find these lines using:

my ($string) = @_;
	my $response = undef;
	
	if($string =~ m/Result=Test/)
	{
		#Return nothing
		$response = "Test worked\n";
	}
	
	if($string =~ m/Result=OK/)
	{
		#Return MessageID value
		$response = ($string =~ m/MessageIDs=/../eof()/);
	}

But what my code is doing is checking if the string contains 'MessageIDs={..}' in the data and it sets $reponse = 1. I infact want the long code part, i.e. i want f89fcc9b-b7ba-44a8-bebe-785302b6f136

How do i extract this ?

Thanks

 

[ishnid]

You want everything from `MessageIDs=' to the end of the line, right?

$response = ($string =~ m/MessageIDs=(.*)$/);

 

[Buddyholly83]

I want just the long string. So if the line is:

MessageIDs=f89fcc9b-b7ba-44a8-bebe-785302b6f136

I want this bit:

f89fcc9b-b7ba-44a8-bebe-785302b6f136

The bit between 'MessageIDs=' and end of line.

This still returns '1' rather than 'f89fcc9b-b7ba-44a8-bebe-785302b6f136'

 

[Buddyholly83]

Thanks for your input ishnid.

All I needed to do was access the code via $1 variable:

#Return MessageID value
		$string =~ m/MessageIDs=(.*)$/;
		$response = $1;

 

[ishnid]

Ah. I was missing parentheses from my original post. Should have been:

( $response ) = ($string =~ m/MessageIDs=(.*)$/);

That's a little safer than the above. If the regexp doesn't match, $response isn't assigned anything. With your one above, $response will be set to the first capturing group of the last regexp that *did* match, regardless of whether it was the one on the previous line or not. You could alternatively introduce an 'if' statement to get the same effect.

 

[duncdude]

Hi Buddyholly83

ishnid is making a noteworthy point - be very careful with the way you have gone about it - i have been caught out several times going about it the way you are just about to...


Kind Regards
Duncan

 

[KevinADC]

alternative method, assumes no "=" in the value of messageID:

sub my_sub {
   my $string = shift;
   my $response = "Test worked\n"; 
   $response = (split(/=/,$string))[1] if ($string eq 'Result=OK';
   return($response);
}

 

[Buddyholly83]

Thanks for the pointers guys. It has been all taken onboard!