Re: Splitting string using two overlapping patterns

in reply to Splitting string using two overlapping patterns

When I look at situations like this, I get really nervous that the incoming file might be even more inconsistent than I thought it was ... and that my “clever regex” solution might be less-robust than I need it to be. I would not be confident that my code is, in fact, a verifiably-correct answer, due to the “clever regex.” So, what I would probably choose to do, is to use a loop, and to break the string down right-to-left, pushing the pieces onto a stack-array as I parsed them. For example:

while ($str ne '') {
   $str =~ s/^\s+//;    # REMOVE LEADING WHITESPACE
   last if ($str eq '');      # LEAVE LOOP EARLY IF IT WAS ALL-WHITESP
+ACE
   if ($str =~ /^\{/) {    # STARTS WITH '{'
      ...
   elsif ...
...
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Well, you get the idea, I think.

Even though this code might-or might-not be “efficient,” I am fairly confident that I could debug it, and that I could extend it to cover new cases and be confident (a) that the new changes work, and that (b) I didn’t break something in the process.

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Re^2: Splitting string using two overlapping patterns by bioinformatics (Friar) on Oct 25, 2013 at 04:54 UTC
It looks like he's parsing the headers from output of a specific program, so it ought to be consistent. Your method and other suggestions should work, but the way he's looking to do it should be fine. This isn't large-scale logfile parsing... Bioinformatics	[reply]

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