Limiting search on RegEx

mr_p has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello All,

I trying to tell the difference if I have html or xml page. The best way I thought was to do a search on first 80 character and look for '<?xml', but I don't know how to limit characters on RegEx search. If anyone know Please let me know.

Thanks You.

Comment on Limiting search on RegEx

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Re: Limiting search on RegEx by kennethk (Abbot) on Jun 30, 2010 at 15:22 UTC
As an alternative to Corion's suggestion, you can anchor your expression to the start of the string. `/^.{0,80}\Q<?xml\E/s` You will likely need the `s` modifier so `.` will match newlines and escaping expressions containing punctuation (`\Q...\E`) is a good habit to get into. See perlretut for details.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Limiting search on RegEx by Corion (Patriarch) on Jun 30, 2010 at 15:14 UTC
Use substr on the left hand side of the regular expression.	[reply]

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