regular expression

[gammaman1]

can someone break this down for me? I'm still trying to understand regular expressions:

$test =~ /^(.*): +(.*)$/)

thanks,
gammaman

 

[rharsh]

Ignoring the extra ) on the end of your statement, here's what your regex is doing:

$test =~ /^      # Match from the beginning of $test
          (.*)   # Capture zero or more characters in $1 up to
          :[ ]+  # a literal : and 1 or more spaces
          (.*)$  # Capture zero or more characters to the end of $test in $2
          /x;    # x modifier allows for comments in the regex

Because I'm using the x modifier, it mangles some of the white space characters. I had to change [blue]: +[/blue] into [blue]:[ ]+[/blue] to make it work the same way the regex you posted does. You can also use :\s+ to do the same thing.

 

[KevinADC]

yea, its looking for something like:

stuff here: more stuff here

 

[MikeLacey]

It's equivalent to this, simpler, expression.

$test =~ /:/

Both expressions are looking for a : character in the variable $test.

Mike

You cannot really appreciate Dilbert unless you've read it in the
original Klingon.

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[ishnid]

The original regexp sets $1 and $2 so they're not really equivalent.