regex help

[vijesh]

Hi Experts, Please help me here. I need to take substring (/fold1/fold2/fold3/) out of following one.

$str1="/fold1/fold2/fold3/file.pl"

  DB<48> p $str1
/fold1/fold2/fold3/file.pl
  DB<49> if ($str1 =~ m#([^/]+)$#) { print $1;}
file.pl  <<<< I managed to get my file name but need to get rest of th
+e path. 
  DB<50>

I need to print "/fold1/fold2/fold3/" in fact. what regexp will help me here? -Thanks, Vijesh

[McA]

Hi,

if you're interested in getting the directory part of a path name I would suggest using dirname from File::Basename.

Regards
McA

[vijesh]

Hello McA,this is working for me..Thanks for support.

[Athanasius]

Hello vijesh,

McA is correct, when dealing with filenames and paths a dedicated module will provide a safer and more portable solution than a hand-written regex. But if you still want to use a regex, try this:

17:12 >perl -wE "my $s = q{/fold1/fold2/fold3/file.pl}; print $1, qq{\
+n} if $s =~ m{^(.+?)[^/]+$};
/fold1/fold2/fold3/

17:16 >

This works because the second quantifier is greedy but the first is not.

Hope that helps,

[vijesh]

Hello Athanasius, Thanks for regex. As you said, McA's suggestion also helps. I shall go with Basename api's. -Thanks and Regds, Vijesh

[choroba]

You can use Path::Tiny to solve most of the file and path related tasks. In this case:

use Path::Tiny;
my $str1 = "/fold1/fold2/fold3/file.pl";
print path($str1)->dirname, "\n";

[vijesh]

wow.. this is a great help too. -Vijesh