Re^2: difference in regex

[ovedpo15]

Thank you for the replay!
As I mentioned on one of the posts on this thread - I would like to split it somehow into two scalars. I can use my ($a,$b) = ($row=~ /(.*),(.*)/); But if $row doesn't have commas it won't work. how do I make always put a string into $path
for example:
if "abc" it will be $path = "abc" and $value is undefined.
if "abc,5" it will be $path = "abc" and $value = 5
if "a,b,c,5" it will be $path = "a,b,c" and $value = 5

[haukex]

Although personally I'd still use a conditional, of course it's possible to do it all in one regex. One way is by making the comma optional by putting a ? on a group, in this case I'm using a non-capturing (?:...) group, and I had to make the first part of the regex non-greedy so that it doesn't swallow an existing comma:

use warnings;
use strict;
use Test::More;

my $regex = qr/ ^ (.*?) (?: , ([^,]*) )? $ /x;

ok "abc"=~$regex;
is $1, "abc";
is $2, undef;

ok "abc,5"=~$regex;
is $1, "abc";
is $2, 5;

ok "a,b,c,5"=~$regex;
is $1, "a,b,c";
is $2, 5;

done_testing;

Update: An alternative that says a little more explicitly: either match a string with no commas in it, or, if there are commas, I want to match the thing after the last one: /^ (?| ([^,]*) | (.*) , ([^,]*) ) $/x Update 2: And it turns out this regex is much faster than the above! (try using it in this benchmark)