http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=1083476


in reply to substitution in regular expression

One-line solution: "ABCDEF" =~ /([A-Z]{3})(?{print "$1\n"})(?!)/;

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Re^2: substitution in regular expression
by aeqr (Novice) on Apr 23, 2014 at 22:27 UTC
    Thanks for the idea, I'll write it down. Just one thing, could you explain the:
    (?{print "$1\n"})(?!)
    I don't understand the question mark before the print block. Also why the (?!) at the end. I noticed that removing it only prints ABC, but I don't understand why. Thank you

      Short explanation: (?{...}) means to execute arbitrary Perl code inside a regular expression, and (?!) makes the regex engine to fail and backtrack, trying to match from the last_pos + 1. When it starts matching ABC, it prints it, fails, backtracks and starts matching from B the next three letters, giving us BCD. The process repeats until the internal regex counter reaches the end of the string.

      I know, I'm really bad at explaining things to humans, but, fortunately, Athanasius explained this better once.

      Please see: Re: RegEx + vs. {1,}

        Thanks a lot! Very well explained actually. It's a nice trick to know.