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replacement with backreference

ericm
New User

Aug 7, 2007, 9:08 PM

Post #1 of 5 (1723 views)

replacement with backreference	Can't Post

I have a number of regex that work fine but I decided to move them into a file like:

"my_pattern" "my_replacement"
....

This works fine until I use a backreference like:

"I_love_(perl)" "no_so_much_$1_now :)"

In fact the backreference is seen as a $1 and doesn't do its job.
As FYI I parse this file and at some point I have for example:

Code

my $pattern=$field[0]; 
my $replacement=$field[1]; 
my $newtext=~ s|$pattern|$replacement|;

What am I missing, here?

Thanks for any tips.

eWish
User

Aug 8, 2007, 7:39 PM

Post #2 of 5 (1712 views)

Re: [ericm] replacement with backreference [In reply to]	Can't Post

I may be missing what you are trying to do here.

Code

my $pattern = $field[0];  
my $replacement = $field[1];  
  
my  $test = $field[0];  
  
if ($test =~ /^$pattern$/) {  
 
# $& holds the entire regex match. 
    my $test1 =~ s/$&/$replacement/; 
 
# Or you could use $1 if you would like.    
    my $test2 =~ s/$1/$replacement/;  
 
    print $test1, "\n"; 
    print $test2, "\n";  
 
} else {  
    print "Did not find a match for $pattern in $test";  
}

(This post was edited by eWish on Aug 8, 2007, 7:46 PM)

ericm
New User

Aug 8, 2007, 8:31 PM

Post #3 of 5 (1707 views)

Re: [eWish] replacement with backreference [In reply to]	Can't Post

let's say I have a file that I want to format differently.

for example I have:
name:address:phone

but I want easily to change the format to:
name--phone--address
and later
address, phone, name

so in order to do that I created only 1 method that will reorder the file.
this method takes 2 arguments pattern and replacement.

I put in a file my pattern and replacement like:

(\w+):(\w+):(\w+)|\1 --\2-- \3
(\w+):(\w+):(\w+)|\3, \2, \1

at some point this file is parsed

Code

my $text="name:address:phone"; 
my $pattern=$field[0]; 
my $replacement=$field[1]; 
 
$text =~ s/$pattern/$replacement/; 
print $text;  
# actual display: \1 --\2-- \3 
# expected : name--phone--address

so a work around I found is to match first and then reuse the backreferences like:

Code

 
my $test =~ m/^$pattern/; 
$test =~ s/$pattern/$1--$2--$3/;  
#display as expected

but in the last example I am loosing what I am trying to achieve which is to move out the code that change.

eWish
User

Aug 8, 2007, 10:11 PM

Post #4 of 5 (1701 views)

Re: [ericm] replacement with backreference [In reply to]	Can't Post

To me this would be the way to go.

Code

my $string = 'Name:Address:Phone';  
my $pattern = ':';  
my $replacement = '--';  
   $string =~ s/$pattern/$replacement/g;

or you could also do

Code

my $string = 'Name:Address:Phone';   
print join('--', split(/:/, $string));

If you are not wanting something so trivial as a replacement of -- or :: etc... and you really need to catch a particular pattern then I am not sure how it will work with the backreferences in a variable like $replacement.

The backreference's seem to be lost in translation, I tested some code and $1, $2 and $3 never contained anything when doing:

my $replacement = "$1--$2--$3";

Edit:
You could do:

Code

my $string = 'Name:Address:Phone'; 
my $pattern = '(\w+):(\w+):(\w+)'; 
my $replacement = '--'; 
 
my $new_string = $string; 
   $new_string =~ s/$pattern/$1$replacement$2$replacement$3/;   
  
print $new_string;

(This post was edited by eWish on Aug 8, 2007, 10:40 PM)

KevinR
Veteran

Aug 9, 2007, 12:08 AM

Post #5 of 5 (1694 views)

Re: [ericm] replacement with backreference [In reply to]	Can't Post

I think you want to use the qr// operator. The qr// operator allows you to store patterns for regexps in variables.
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