Kevin Zembower wrote:
>
> Thank you all for some first thoughts and clarifying questions.
>
> I'm trying to discard any URL with any character that is not an upper- or lower-case
> letter, digit, or the characters $-_.+!*'(), . I realize that some other characters
> can be
> used in special circumstances, but I don't have to allow for any of these in my
> program.
>
> I thought that my perl statement:
> if ($url =~ /^[^A-Za-z0-9$-_.+!*'(),]+$/) { #if there are any invalid URL
> characters in the string
> # Remember, special regex
> characters lose their meaning inside []
> print "Invalid character in URL at line $.: $url\n";
> next;
> }
> is saying:
> if the variable $url contains any characters not in the set
> [A-Za-z0-9$-_.+!*'(),]+$/), print "Invalid ..."
>
> So, I think I need help in two areas; Do I have my logic backwards because I'm
> trying to match any
> character in a variable, and, How do I write the match statement to do what I want.
Hi Kevin.
Take note of Charles' points, but also note that Perl is trying to expand
the built-in variable $- into your regex. This is almost certainly zero
unless you're using formats, so you're including the digit zero for a second
time instead of dollar and dash.
If you escape the dollar and code
[A-Za-z0-9\$-_.+!*'(),]
instead, then your class will include all characters from dollar up to
underscore. So you need to escape both dollar and dash:
if ($url =~ /[A-Za-z0-9\$\-_.+!*'(),]/) {
# Remember MOST special regex characters lose their meaning inside []
print "Invalid character in URL at line $.: $url\n";
next;
}
HTH,
Rob
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<http://learn.perl.org/> <http://learn.perl.org/first-response>
