Re: RegEx Headaches

[bart]

You can do

@numbers = /(\d+)(?=\.)(?=.*\.xml$)/g

This uses lookahead, which will match the rest of the string, but not consume it.

If you don't need the extra check, you can just do

@numbers = /(\d+)/g

[oryx3]

Hmmm, interesting. Now I've got:

  DB<23> x $_
0  'ActionLogs.1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9.xml'

  DB<24> x /(\d+\.)/g
0  1.
1  2.
2  3.
3  4.
4  5.
5  6.
6  7.
7  8.
8  9.

but:

  DB<25> x /(\d+\.)+/g
0  9.

Can anyone tell me why the quantifier makes it match only the last group?

[kennethk]

The quantifier actually makes it match every group; however, it only stores the last match in $1, and thus that's what you see in your return. See Extracting matches in perlretut.

If you want to extract an arbitrary number of digits sandwiched between decimal points, you can grab them all, and then split the result.

/((?:\d+\.)+)/g;
split /(?<=\.)/, $1;

Alternatively,

[i]n list context, //g returns a list of matched groupings, or if there are no groupings, a list of matches to the whole regexp

(see Global matching in perlretut) so you could try

my @res = /(?<=\.)\d+\./g;