Perl Guru Forums: Perl Programming Help: Regular Expressions: what does this reg exp mean?

CGI/Perl Guide | Learning Center | Forums | Advertise | Login

Site Search: in


	MAIN INDEX	SEARCH POSTS	WHO'S ONLINE	LOG IN

Home: Perl Programming Help: Regular Expressions:
what does this reg exp mean?

jelena
New User

Jun 1, 2011, 5:07 PM

Post #1 of 7 (5902 views)

what does this reg exp mean?	Can't Post

Hi, I need help understanding what does this regular expression return.

$text_file =~ s/\/\w*\.txt\//\/ZZ\.txt\//g;

Thanks!

miller
User

Jun 1, 2011, 5:13 PM

Post #2 of 7 (5901 views)

Re: [jelena] what does this reg exp mean? [In reply to]	Can't Post

That's much easier to read and therefore understand if one uses a different delimiter for the regex. My preference is to use s{}{} instead of s/// any time I have forward slashes in what I'm trying to match.

That changes the regex to the following which I would hope you could read easier:

Code

$text_file =~ s{/\w*\.txt/}{/ZZ.txt/}g;

- Miller

jelena
New User

Jun 1, 2011, 5:33 PM

Post #3 of 7 (5896 views)

Re: [miller] what does this reg exp mean? [In reply to]	Can't Post

Thanks a lot,
this means replace any occurrence of words ending with .txt with ZZ.txt ? Am I right, or does /ZZ have some other meaning?

miller
User

Jun 1, 2011, 6:04 PM

Post #4 of 7 (5892 views)

Re: [jelena] what does this reg exp mean? [In reply to]	Can't Post

Yes, the right side of a regex is just a standard interpolated string, so ZZ means nothing special.

And yes, the left hand side is matching any word suffixed with .txt and enclosed in forward slashes /.../

Why someone would want to do such a substitution, I couldn't say though.

- M

rovf
Veteran

Jun 6, 2011, 12:51 AM

Post #5 of 7 (5707 views)

Re: [miller] what does this reg exp mean? [In reply to]	Can't Post

This would translate a string such as

/foo/bar.txt/baz

into

/ZZ.txt/baz

but would keep a string such as

/foo/bar.txt

unchanged.

Since * is a greedy regexp operator, the 'g' modifier in the end of the regexp is, IMO, meaningless (which could be an indication that this regexp doesn't exactly do what the person who wrote it, had in mind).

miller
User

Jun 6, 2011, 10:28 AM

Post #6 of 7 (5695 views)

Re: [rovf] what does this reg exp mean? [In reply to]	Can't Post

In Reply To

This would translate a string such as

/foo/bar.txt/baz

into

/ZZ.txt/baz

Close rovf, but the / character is not a member of the \w character class. So it would in fact translate that string into:

Code

my $text_file = '/foo/bar.txt/baz'; 
$text_file =~ s{/\w*\.txt/}{/ZZ.txt/}g; 
print "$text_file\n"; 
 
=prints 
/foo/ZZ.txt/baz 
=cut

Agree with all other comments though.

- M

rovf
Veteran

Jun 6, 2011, 1:48 PM

Post #7 of 7 (5693 views)

Re: [miller] what does this reg exp mean? [In reply to]	Can't Post

Ah, good old miller, always to the point!

Of course, you are right! Sorry, I mis-slashed. Need new spectacles, I think ;-) Thank you for pointing out my mistake!

Search for (options)

Web Applications & Managed Hosting Powered by Gossamer Threads
Visit our Mailing List Archives