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what does this reg exp mean?

jelena
New User

Jun 1, 2011, 5:07 PM

Post #1 of 7 (4998 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 (4997 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 (4992 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 (4988 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 (4803 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 (4791 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 (4789 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!

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