perlquestion
leahymr
<p>Dear Monks, I beg your wisdom...</p>
<p>I am trying to parse a string for which I need to consume dynamically determined number of characters. Can P:RD be persuaded to do that?</p>
<p>Here is a simple example string:<br>
<code>s:5:"abcde";</code> -- the '5' is the number of characters in the string</p>
<p>Here's the hard part:<br>
<code>s:18:"s:10:"abcdefghij";";</code> -- the string can store other strings, so I can't just search for ";</p>
<p>I know that subrules can have repetition counts, but I can't get something like<br>
<code>String: 's: ' Count '"' Cdata($item{Count}) '";'</code>
to work</p>
<p>Here's the simplified grammar. Is there a way I can consume the number of characters specified by $item{Count}?</p>
<code>
my $grammar = q{
CompText: Command(s)
Command:
String
| Integer
Array: 'a:' <commit> Count ':{' Command(s) '}'
{ $return = "a:$item{Count}:{" . join( '', @{$item[-2]}) . "}"
}
String:
's:' Count ':"' Array '";'
{ $return = "s:$item{Count}:\"" . join( '', @{$item{Array}}) . "\";"
}
| 's:' Count ':"' Cdata_String '";'
{ $return = "s:$item{Count}:\"" . join( '', @{$item[-2]}) . "\";"
}
Cdata_String: Cdata(s?)
Count: /\d+/
Cdata:
/./
};
</code>
<p>Thank you,<br>--Michael</p>