Re: Reducing a line read into $_

[I0]

s/\[.*?\]//;

[Daniellek]

One fast question from acolyte: why's there "?" in your regexp?
I wrote s/^\[.*\]//; and it works, so what gives us this question mark? or this is no difference?

-- 
Daniellek

[davorg]

The '?' gives you non-greedy matching. It shouldn't matter on the data that we've been shown, but if there's a chance that the data will have another ']' character later in the string, then the '?' becomes essential. Compare these:

$_ = '[Remove this] and nothing else';
s/\[.*\]//g;
print;

$_ = '[Remove this] and [nothing] else';
s/\[.*\]//g;
print;

and then try then again with the '?'.

--
<http://www.dave.org.uk>

"Perl makes the fun jobs fun
and the boring jobs bearable" - me

[Daniellek]

Your wisdom is superb!

So for the problem of this thread, possibly the best possible will be: s/^\[.*?\]//g;

Am I right?

-- 
Daniellek