More Regex for Newbies

Hi all. I have this strange relationship with Regex. I seem to be able
to get simple
stuff accomplished, but in really brute-force ways, and I think I'm
missing some
fundamental aspect of its usage. I'm forced to chomp thru strings from
the
side like pac-man. It's like I can do a simple match or substitution,
but I can't
get stuff out of a string that I want (which is what seems to be going
on in all
the examples).

For example, if I have a string that goes like

"Joe Shmoe (alphanumerics)"

and I want to get the alphanumerics between the parens, It's like
pulling teeth,
I think (i think..) what I want to do is match the stuff that's _not_
between the
parens, and substitute that to nothing? Is that how to do it?

Mike

Mike Lesser wrote:
> Hi all. I have this strange relationship with Regex. I seem to be able
> to get simple
> stuff accomplished, but in really brute-force ways, and I think I'm
> missing some
> fundamental aspect of its usage. I'm forced to chomp thru strings from
> the
> side like pac-man. It's like I can do a simple match or substitution,
> but I can't
> get stuff out of a string that I want (which is what seems to be going
> on in all
> the examples).
>=20
> For example, if I have a string that goes like
>=20
>    "Joe Shmoe (alphanumerics)"
Are you after the 'alphanumerics' and replacing or selecting.

Something like:
my $MyAlpha =3D '';
if ( /^.+\(([^)])+\)/ ) {
$MyAlpha =3D $1;
}
So this would have alphanumerics in $MyAlpha.
^		Start of field
.+		1 or more characters
\(		find a left paren
([^)]+)	Now gobble up to but not including the next )
$1 will hold what is between the Parens
\)		find a right paren

A good place to start is a book by Friedl ( Mastering Regular Expressions =
) ISBN: 0596002890

Wags ;)=20
>=20
> and I want to get the alphanumerics between the parens, It's like
> pulling teeth,
> I think (i think..) what I want to do is match the stuff that's _not_
> between the
> parens, and substitute that to nothing? Is that how to do it?
>=20
> Mike



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Mike Lesser <mailto:exceptions@earthlink.net> wrote:

: For example, if I have a string that goes like
:
:    "Joe Shmoe (alphanumerics)"
:
: and I want to get the alphanumerics between the parens, It's like
: pulling teeth, I think (i think..) what I want to do is match the
: stuff that's _not_ between the: parens, and substitute that to
: nothing? Is that how to do it?

Start with the starting character and capture the interior by
matching everything except the closing character.

use strict;
use warnings;

my $phrase = 'Joe Shmoe (alphanumerics)';

print $1 if $phrase =~

m/
\(          # Start with the starting character.

(           # Start the capture.

[^)]+       # Capture everything in a class which
#   excludes the closing character.

)           # Close the capture.
/x;

__END__


HTH,

Charles K. Clarkson
--
Mobile Homes Specialist
254 968-8328

On Mon, 28 Mar 2005 18:07:20 -0500, Mike Lesser wrote:
> Hi all. I have this strange relationship with Regex. I seem to be able
> to get simple stuff accomplished, but in really brute-force ways,

The answer from Charles will help you up with your specific problem.
In addition, I heartly recommend that you read "perldoc perlrequick"
and "perldoc perlretut":
http://perldoc.perl.org/perlrequick.html
http://perldoc.perl.org/perlretut.html

--
Offer Kaye

> I'm fairly new too, but
>
> s/\(.*\)//g
>
> Should work?
>
Thanks David. The "g" sort of throws me, but I had The Epiphany last
night. I'm still a little
bit , but I'm making headway now.