On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 04:08, Noah Garrett Wallach<noah-l...@enabled.com> wrote: > > Hi there, > > is there any way to search for the following text? In some cases the text > that I am search could be > > "one-two-three-" > > or sometimes the text could be > > "one-two-" > > what is a nice easy why to parse the above - quotes not included. snip
What you are looking for is quantifiers. Quantifiers state how many times the preceding pattern must match: if (/^one-two-(?:three-){0,1}$/} { print "matched\n" } In that example the quantifer {0,1} says that the pattern (?:three-) should be between zero and one times. This is a common enough quantifier that it has gotten a shortcut: if (/^one-two-(?:three-)?$/} { print "matched\n" } Other shortcuts are + (for {1,}, i.e. one or more) and * (for {0,}, i.e. zero or more). -- Chas. Owens wonkden.net The most important skill a programmer can have is the ability to read. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: beginners-unsubscr...@perl.org For additional commands, e-mail: beginners-h...@perl.org http://learn.perl.org/