Re^3: dumb regex question

[Nkuvu]

With that additional qualification, it will get a bit more tricky. My first thought was to add a space to the character class: m,"?(/[^" ]*)"?,

But that doesn't work because it won't care that it has found a space inside or outside of a quote, and will stop the regex. Meaning it would capture just "/bootMe" from the line "/bootMe any text here".

I'd suggest looking into a module like Text::xSV or Text::CSV_XS and setting the delimiter to spaces. Then reject any entry that doesn't have a leading slash. This means dropping the regex entirely.

Something like:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Text::CSV_XS;

my $csv = Text::CSV_XS->new ({sep_char => ' '});

while (my $line = <DATA>) {
    chomp $line;

    # See perldoc Text::CSV_XS for warnings
    # about this approach with possible embedded
    # newlines:
    my $status = $csv->parse($line);

    my @fields;
    if ($status) {
        @fields = $csv->fields();
    }
    else {
        warn "Problem parsing $line\n";
    }
    
    for my $field (@fields) {
        print "Captured ($field) from $line\n" if $field =~ m!^/!;
    }
}


__DATA__
"/moreIters 10"
"/bootMe any text here"
/fewIter
/some stuff here
"/albatross" foo bar baz
monkeys
leprechauns /not monkeys
/gnomes "not leprechauns though"
/gnomes more data here

Which gives the output:

Captured (/moreIters 10) from "/moreIters 10"
Captured (/bootMe any text here) from "/bootMe any text here"
Captured (/fewIter) from /fewIter
Captured (/some) from /some stuff here
Captured (/albatross) from "/albatross" foo bar baz
Captured (/not) from leprechauns /not monkeys
Captured (/gnomes) from /gnomes "not leprechauns though"
Captured (/gnomes) from /gnomes more data here