tom arnall am Freitag, 31. März 2006 09.56:
> i need the blank in 'From [' etc in order to distinguish it from the
> strings with 'From:' one solution to the problem, btw, is to use '\s'
> instead of a literal blank. does this behavior rank as a bug in perl?

No, absolutely not. 

To make your distiction, you *have* to use the \s with the /x modifier; 
without, you can use either.

The /x modifier's aim is to allow readable *formatting* of complex regexes 
with spaces, line brakes, comments (#). ' ' in this case is irrelevant for 
the matching. Look at the beginning of 

perldoc perlre

hth!

Hans

[bottom post order:]
> On Thursday 30 March 2006 05:15 am, Hans Meier (John Doe) wrote:
> > tom arnall am Donnerstag, 30. März 2006 12.36:
> > > the following code:
> > >
> > >   my (@main);
> > >   $_="
> > >   From a
> > >   From: b
> > >   From: c
> > >   From: d
> > >   ";
> > >   @main = /From [^\n]*?\n.*?(From: .*?\n).*?/gx;
> > >   print "@main";
> > >   print "------------------------------\n";
> > >   @main =         /From [^\n]*?\n.*?(From: .*?\n).*?/g;
> > >   print "@main";
> > >
> > > produces:
> > >
> > >   From: b
> > >    From: d
> > >   ------------------------------
> > >   From: b
> > >
> > > the only difference between the two regex lines is the 'x' after '/g'
> > > in the first of the two regex lines.
> >
> > indeed :-)
> >
> > And your question could be: Why does this produce different results?
> >
> > There's an additional difference on the semantic level: spaces in the 1st
> > regex are irrelevant. Look at the first regex space: in the 2nd regex, it
> > matches (only) in "From a", but not in "From: c", whereas the 1st regex
> > matches "From a" *and* "From: c".
> >
> > /From[^\n]*?\n.*?(From: .*?\n).*?/gx;
> > and
> > /From[^\n]*?\n.*?(From: .*?\n).*?/g;
> > produce both the same output.
> >
> > hth!
> > Hans

--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<http://learn.perl.org/> <http://learn.perl.org/first-response>


Reply via email to