Pls help with a Regex

[David Joseph Bonnici]

I have this sort of information in a text file

19:00 STEPPING THE WORLD: Greek Islands - Corfu.

and I am trying to build a regex that will put

19 into backreference 1
00 into backreference 2
STEPPING THE WORLD into backreference 3
Greek Islands - Corfu into backreference 4

I have built this ^(\d{2})(?::|\.)(\d{2})\s(.*)(?::\s)(.*).$ and it works fine

but I want that if I have something like this
19:00 STEPPING THE WORLD

I would still have backreference 1,2, and 3 filled.

Any help

 

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

I have this sort of information in a text file

19:00 STEPPING THE WORLD: Greek Islands - Corfu.

and I am trying to build a regex that will put

19 into backreference 1
00 into backreference 2
STEPPING THE WORLD into backreference 3
Greek Islands - Corfu into backreference 4

I have built this ^(\d{2})(?::|\.)(\d{2})\s(.*)(?::\s)(.*).$ and it works fine

but I want that if I have something like this
19:00 STEPPING THE WORLD

I would still have backreference 1,2, and 3 filled.

Then make the last part optional:

^(\d{2})(?::|\.)(\d{2})\s(.*?)(??::\s)(.*).)?$
--------------------------------^-^^^-------------^

or slightly simplified:

^(\d{2})[:.](\d{2})\s(.*?)(?::\s(.*))?$

 

[Tad McClellan]

I have this sort of information in a text file

19:00 STEPPING THE WORLD: Greek Islands - Corfu.

^^^
^^^

That was a tab character in your post, I plan to make use of that.

and I am trying to build a regex that will put

19 into backreference 1
00 into backreference 2
STEPPING THE WORLD into backreference 3
Greek Islands - Corfu into backreference 4

I have built this ^(\d{2})(?::|\.)(\d{2})\s(.*)(?::\s)(.*).$ and it works fine

It looks like "saying what you want to keep"[1] is hard...

but I want that if I have something like this
19:00 STEPPING THE WORLD

I would still have backreference 1,2, and 3 filled.

"saying what you want to throw away"[2] may be easier.

If the string is already in $_, then:

my @fields = split /:\s*|\t/;

Figuring out how to get rid of the dot from the end of the last
field is left as an exercise for the reader.




Randal has a saying:

[1] If you want to say what to keep then use m// in list context.

[2] If you want to say what to throw away then use split().

 

[David Joseph Bonnici]

Thanks it works fine.

I have this sort of information in a text file

19:00 STEPPING THE WORLD: Greek Islands - Corfu.

and I am trying to build a regex that will put 19 into
backreference 1
00 into backreference 2
STEPPING THE WORLD into backreference 3
Greek Islands - Corfu into backreference 4

I have built this ^(\d{2})(?::|\.)(\d{2})\s(.*)(?::\s)(.*).$ and it works
fine

but I want that if I have something like this
19:00 STEPPING THE WORLD

I would still have backreference 1,2, and 3 filled.

Then make the last part optional:

^(\d{2})(?::|\.)(\d{2})\s(.*?)(??::\s)(.*).)?$
--------------------------------^-^^^-------------^

or slightly simplified:

^(\d{2})[:.](\d{2})\s(.*?)(?::\s(.*))?$