Joe Sprankle wrote: > > Hi all, Hello,
> I am brand new to perl, and programming at that. I'm learning alot from > Robert's Perl Tutorial and I was hoping someone culd possibly clear up the > following from the tutorial: > > $_='My email address is <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.'; > print "Match 1 worked :$1:" if /(<*)/i; This regular expression matches zero or more consecutive '<' characters case-insensitively and stores the match in the $1 variable. Since the '<' character doesn't have an upper or lower case version the /i option is not doing anything useful. Since zero '<' characters will always match, the regular expression is always true and the statement will always print. > $_='<My email address is <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.'; > print "Match 2 worked :$1:" if /(<*)/i; Same as above. > $_='My email address is <[EMAIL PROTECTED]<<<<>.'; > print "Match 3 worked :$1:" if /(<*>)/i; This regular expression matches zero or more consecutive '<' characters followed by one '>' character case-insensitively and stores the match in the $1 variable. Since neither the '<' or '>' character have an upper or lower case version the /i option is not doing anything useful. Since '>' must match for the regular expression to be true and the '*' is greedy this will match the longest string of '<' followed by a '>' at the end of your string. John -- use Perl; program fulfillment -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
