Re: Regex advice

Gunnar Hjalmarsson wrote:

>>>> if 
>>>> (/.*simscan~\[\d+\]~([\w|\s]+).*?~(\d+\.\d+)s~.*?~(.*?)~(.*?)~(.*)/) {
>>> -------------------------^^^^^^^^^^
>>> This captures the "result", but with a trailing space. You may want 
>>> to let the capturing parentheses be followed by \s to prevent that.
> 
> With "captures the result" I mean captures what's later going into the 
> $result variable. Since a quantified subpattern such as
> 
>     ([\w|\s]+)
> 
> is greedy by default, it would capture
> 
>     "CLEAN "
> 
> or
> 
>     "SPAM REJECT "
> 
> i.e. with trailing spaces. I simply suggested that you add a \s, i.e.
> 
>     ([\w|\s]+)\s
> 
> to rather capture "CLEAN" or "SPAM REJECT".

...ahhh, I see, I see... capture the quantified result (in non-variable 
sense) but terminate the result at a whitespace...right? Without 
testing, would a '\s+' have any impact in place of your '\s'? (...I'm 
just being inquisitive here, before I can actually test for myself).

>>>>                 $result   = $1 if $1;
>>>>                 $scantime = $2 if $2;
>>>>                 $ip       = $3 if $3;
>>>>                 $from     = $4 if $4;
>>>>                 $to       = $5 if $5;
>>>
>>> The statement modifiers seem redundant to me.
> 
> "if $1" etc. are statement modifiers; see "perldoc perlsyn".

Thank you, I will.

> I mean that since the regex returned a true value, we know already that 
> all the dollar-digit variables are defined. 

....again...ahhh :)

> Sure, $3, $4, or $5 might 
> just be the null string, but - without knowing what the rest of the 
> program looks like - I assume that you ought to assign it to respective 
> variable anyway.

Thank you for your feedback. It has been very informative, and I at 
least now know where to go look.

Steve