Substitute (s///) a set of times

[jryan]

This subroutine will s/// a set number of times.

The obvious solution would seem to be: s/\Gpattern/blah/ while $count--, but that does not work because \G only works with m//, and s/(a)/<$1$1>/ while $count-- would restart the match each time at the beginning. (pos=0)

Usage is: subtimes($string, $number_of_times, $pattern, $string_to_substitute). You can include $dollar variables in $string_to_substitute, just make sure to remember to backslash the dollar variable in the string.

For instance, this: print subtimes("ababa", 2, qr/(a)/,"<\$1\$1>"); would print "<aa>b<aa>ba".

Update: Fixed a bug.

print subtimes($string, 2, qr/(a)/,"<\$1\$1>");

sub subtimes {
    my ($string, $count, $find, $tosub) = @_;
    no strict "refs";
    
    my $newstring;
    while ($count--) {
        next unless $string =~ /($find)/;
        my ($num,%res) = 2;
        $res{$num++}=$$num while defined $$num;
        my ($matched, $startoffset, $endoffset, $temp) = ($1, $-[0], $
++[0], $tosub);

        $temp =~ s/\$(\d+)/my $r=$1;$r++;$res{$r}/ge;
        $newstring .= substr($string, 0, $startoffset).$temp;
        substr($string, 0, $endoffset) = '';
    }
    return $newstring.$string;
}

[runrig]

This is not very well tested, but how about:

use re 'eval';
my $str = "111111111";
my $times = 5;
my $re = qr/1/;
my $cnt;
$str =~ s/$re(?(?{++$cnt > $times})\A)/2/g;
print "$str\n";

Turning this into a subroutine is left as an exercise.

[demerphq]

IMO its a bad habit to use lexicals in such constructs. They will only work once. For instance your code will not work properly if naively converted to a subroutine. The $cnt var needs to be a package scoped var. Otherwise what happens is that the regex is compiled once and the first $cnt will be enclosed into the (?{}), on the second run the new $cnt is not used, rather the original will be used. So for instance

use re 'eval';
sub limited_re {
    my $str=shift;
    my $re=shift;
    my $repl=shift;
    my $times=shift;

    our $cnt;
    local $cnt=0;
    $str =~ s/$re(?(?{++$cnt > $times})\A)/eval $repl/ge;
    print "$str\n";
}

limited_re("111111111",qr/1/,5,2);
limited_re("000000000111111111",qr/1/,2,5);

Works as expected. Change the our $cnt; local $cnt=0; to a my $cnt; and it won't. I got bitten by this when working on a solution for QOTW 23 (which happens to be on my pad at the time of posting this.)

[runrig]

Thanks, I did not realize the dangers of lexicals in this situation. Though in order to get the capture variable behavior of the OP's code, I made the following changes:

...
    $str =~ s/$re(?(?{++$cnt > $times})\A)/qq["$repl"]/gee;
...

limited_re("111111111",qr/(1)/,'${1}5',2);

Though it would have worked with the code as it was if you included double quotes inside the single quotes of the replacement string, e.g., '"${1}5"'.