Re: How do I count the number of tabs at the beginning of a string?

[Jeff 'japhy/Marillion' Pinyan]

On Jul 23, Michael Dube said:

>I know that tr/// will return the number of matches in a string.  My attempt
>below results in $inittabcount being set to 6 (wrong), while $tabcount gets
>correctly set to 5.
>
>       $test = "\t\t\tsasdfasdftill:\tin\tscope?";
>
>       $inittabcount = ($test =~ tr/^\t*?\w//);

tr/// is NOT a regular expression.  Please do not be misled into think it
is.  It merely does character-to-character translation.

To count the number of leading (anything)s in a string, use a regex like
so:

  $string =~ /^((?:anything)*)/;
  $count = length($1) / length(anything);

For tabs, you'd do:

  $string =~ /^(\t*)/;
  $count = length($1);  # the divided-by-1 is implicit

-- 
Jeff "japhy" Pinyan      [EMAIL PROTECTED]      http://www.pobox.com/~japhy/
I am Marillion, the wielder of Ringril, known as Hesinaur, the Winter-Sun.
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