(jeffa) Re: Parse mailing addresses with a regex

[jeffa]

The first mistake most make when creating a complex regex is to use $1,$2, et al. Just capture everything into an array. This is not guaranteed to work for everything you throw at it, but it works for the data you have given:

my @line;
foreach my $line (@data_file) {
   @line = $line =~ /
      (\d+)\s+                # first numbers
      ([^\d]+)                # full name
      (.*)?(?:\w\w)\s+        # street address
      (\w\w)\s+               # state
      (\d{5})\s+              # zip
      (\d{3}-\d{3}-\d{4})\s+  # phone
      (.*)                    # the rest
   /x;
   print join('|',@line),"\n";
}

And here is a play by play breakdown ;)

• (\d+)\s+: one or more digits followed by at least one white space
• ([^\d]+): everything up to a digit
• (.*)?(?:\w\w)\s+: tricky (and fragile) - this gets everything up to two consecutive alphas that are followed by at least one whitespace
• (\w\w)\s+: two consecutive alphas followed by at least one whitespace
• (\d{5})\s+: exactly 5 digits followed by at least one whitespace
• (\d{3}-\d{3}-\d{4})\s+: you get the picture ;)

Hope this helps, anything more might require something smarter like Parse::RecDescent.

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)