On Thu, 2004-05-20 at 01:21, meb wrote:
> Maybe this is because I'm a newbie, or maybe it's because I'm trying to
> modify RSS text. This is a perl script for a web site.
>
> In any case, there's a feed that includes the author at the end of the
> (looong) description. I'd like to limit the decsription to the first 20
> words, add an ellipsis (...) and add the author's name, like so:
>
> These are the first 20 words of this item, and it's really... By Joe Schmo.
>
>
> My regex looks something like this:
>
> (Save 1st 20 words):
>
> /^(\w|\W){20}/g
>
> (Save author tag - always starts with By and ends with period. I think this
> will also ignore periods in middle initials):
>
> /By\s?+\.$/g
>
>
> My problem is that I can't figure out how to modify the string. I've even
> tried $intro + "..." + $author, but that didn't work. I also tried a lot of
> different constructions, like ($intro = $fullDesc) =~ /^(\w|\W){20}/g
$intro =~ s/(?<=^(\w|\W){20}).*(?=By.*$)/... /;
untested :-)
For replacing something, use
$var =~ s/regular_expression/what_you_want_as_a_replacement/
What I've done was to replace anything having 20 words before and a
"By.*" after with "... "
To concatenate strings, use a dot (.), like this:
$var = $intro . "... " . $author
HTH,
jac
> If anyone could provide any insight (or a Regex for Dummies page), I'd
> appreciate it.
>
> Thanks.
--
Josà Alves de Castro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Telbit - Tecnologias de InformaÃÃo
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