So since '?' will match the last character, group, or class 0 or 1 time the it matches the group of whatever happens to be in '.*' up to any spaces that are attached to the '$'.
Is that correct? Tony Heal > -----Original Message----- > From: Chas Owens [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Thursday, August 02, 2007 4:55 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Cc: beginners@perl.org > Subject: Re: regex help > > On 8/2/07, Tony Heal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > snip > > Why doesn't this work? I want to take any leading or trailing white spaces > > out. > > If I remove the remark it works, but I > > do not understand why it requires the second line > > $string =~ s/^(\s+)(.*)(\s+)$/$2/; > snip > > Because (.*) matches all but the one space needed by the second (\s+). > The . matches everything including the spaces. You can fix this by > saying > > $string =~ s/^(\s+)(.*?)(\s+)$/$2/; > > to make (.*) match the smallest pattern (non-greedy) instead of the > largest (greedy). -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://learn.perl.org/
