How to split unique patterns

cornelius80 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Dear Monks, I have a $line as such:

A::B:123-456 hh:mm:C::D:789
[download]

I am trying to split the string such that I will obtain the following in an array:

A

B
123-456 hh:mm
C

D
789
[download]

I have tried @array=split(/:/,$line); but the problem I am facing is that the hh:mm gets "caught in the action" too,ie.

A

B
123-456 hh
mm
C

D
789
[download]

What are your advice, please? Kind Regards, Cornelius

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Re: How to split unique patterns by Corion (Patriarch) on Jun 10, 2013 at 08:41 UTC
Instead of splitting, I would instead match the data I want to keep. Using a regular expression has the benefit of also somewhat validating your data, so you get notice of malformed input early: `my @columns= qw( name branch code timestamp info1 info2 id); $line=~ /^(A)::(B):(123-456) ([012]\d:[0-6]\d):(C)::(D):(789)/ or die "Malformed input [$line] in line $."; my %info; @info{ @columns }= ($1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6);` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: How to split unique patterns by reisinge (Hermit) on Jun 10, 2013 at 14:15 UTC
Didn't you mean `@info{ @columns }= ($1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6)` (a hash slice) instead of `$info{ @columns }= ($1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6)`? Well done is better than well said. -- Benjamin Franklin	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: How to split unique patterns by Corion (Patriarch) on Jun 10, 2013 at 14:35 UTC
Whoops! Thank you, fixed!	[reply]
Re^2: How to split unique patterns by cornelius80 (Initiate) on Jun 10, 2013 at 08:55 UTC
Hi Corion, Thank you for your suggestion. However, I might have left out some criteria though. 1. A,B,C,D.. are headers that I would need to have with their preceding values equated to. eg. A=undef,B=123-456 hh:mm, C=undef,D=789... 2. This would mean that the RHS of the headers would change over time keeping the LHS headers constant. How would you suggest that I overcome this, please? Thank you. Kind Regards, Cornelius	[reply]
Re^3: How to split unique patterns by Corion (Patriarch) on Jun 10, 2013 at 09:15 UTC
I don't understand the additional requirements from your text. Can you maybe post some (anonymized) more relevant input data?	[reply]
Re^4: How to split unique patterns by cornelius80 (Initiate) on Jun 10, 2013 at 09:24 UTC
Re^5: How to split unique patterns by Corion (Patriarch) on Jun 10, 2013 at 09:37 UTC
Some notes below your chosen depth have not been shown here
Re^3: How to split unique patterns by AnomalousMonk (Archbishop) on Jun 10, 2013 at 14:08 UTC
... I might have left out some criteria ... Oh, of course you left out critical criteria! Answering these questions would not be near as much fun if we actually had accurate problem statements to begin with. I'm sure Corion appreciates the opportunity to waste... er, devote his or her time to providing a useful and insightful answer to a fundamentally mis-stated question. Many ++ to Corion for truly humble monkish patience, forbearance and generosity in dealing with a miserable sinner.	[reply]
Re: How to split unique patterns by hdb (Monsignor) on Jun 10, 2013 at 08:45 UTC
First, your split creates a couple of empty fields caused by the double colons present. Secondly, the "hh" is still part of "123-456 hh", is this intentional? If you want to stick to `split`, you could re-join hh with mm afterwards: `use strict; use warnings; use Data::Dumper; my $line = "A::B:123-456 hh:mm:C::D:789"; my @array = split /:/, $line; print Dumper \@array; splice @array, 3, 2, join( ":", @array[ 3..4 ] ) ; print Dumper \@array;` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]

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