japhy
Enthusiast
Jan 29, 2000, 2:32 PM
Post #2 of 2
(306 views)
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Well, the s/ *// regex will remove the FIRST and LONGEST occurrance of 0 or more spaces. Let me show you something that will boggle your mind:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Arial,Helvetica,sans serif">code:</font><HR>
$string = "fred xxxxxx barney";
$string =~ s/x*//;
print $string; # "fred xxxxxx barney"
</pre><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
What?! Why didn't it remove the x's in the middle? Well, because the first occurrance of 0 or more x's is right at the beginning of the string. Can't you see the 0 x's before the "f" of "fred"? So it removes those x's, all 0 of them.
What you probably want is s/ +//. Or even better, s/ +//g. The + means 1 or more, so that won't match 0 spaces. And the /g means do this for all sets of 1 or more spaces.
Even better is the use of tr///. tr/ //d will remove all spaces, and do so quickly.
Read the perlre documentation for information on s/// and tr///.
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