regex help

[rsiedl]

hi monks,

can anyone help me out with this regex? i'm trying to create an array of values that are in a string.
i.e. the string "\"foo\"[MH] or \"bar\"[MH]" should return an array that looks like [ "foo", "bar" ].
here's what i have but it's being greedy:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;

my $term = "\"foo\"[MH] OR \"bar\"[MH]";
my @matches = ( $term =~ /\"(.+)?\"\[MH\]/ );

print $_,"\n" foreach (@matches);

any help would be appreciated.

cheers,
reagen

[kyle]

Two small changes will help. The new regex line is:

my @matches = ( $term =~ /\"(.*?)\"\[MH\]/g );

The first change is to make the capture non-greedy (from (.+)? to (.*?)). The second change is to use the /g flag to collect all the matches, not just the first one. Have a look at perlre for all the gory details.

[sanPerl]

(.+)? and (.+) works same in your case, because (.+) forms a greedy pattern first and which nullifies the presence of ?

[Samy_rio]

Hi, Try now,

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;

my $term = "\"foo\"[MH] OR \"bar\"[MH]";
my @matches = $term =~ /(\"(.+)?\"\[MH\])/ ;

print $_,"\n" foreach (@matches);

[ikegami]

Your code produces the same output as the OP's code. You didn't fix anything.

[blazar]

my $term = "\"foo\"[MH] OR \"bar\"[MH]";
my @matches = ( $term =~ /\"(.+)?\"\[MH\]/ );

As a side note you don't have to do double-quotes-quoting-acrobatics: just use single quotes or alternate delimiters (should you need interpolation or "\*" thingies).

my $term = '"foo"[MH] OR "bar"[MH]';

or

my $term = qq|"foo"[MH] OR "bar"[MH]|;