Kenneth Brun Nielsen wrote:
>
> I need to make a conditional on a regular expression match. How can I
> do that?
>
> E.g. in the code below, it prints all lines, and NOT only the ones
> that match. How can I make the boolean test correct?
>
> #!/usr/bin/perl -w
> open FILEHANDLE, "soatest.soa";
> while (<FILEHANDLE>){
> if (/^\*| XI/) {
> print "match in line: $.\n";
> }
> }
The regular expression /^\*| XI/ matches strings that either start with an
asterisk or contain ' XI' anywhere. If you want to match strings that start with
either an asterisk or ' XI' then you need
/^(?:\*| XI)/
It looks messy, but (?: ... ) is simply non-capturing parentheses. You could use
/^\*|^ XI/
instead if you prefer.
If you wanted something different from that you must let us know.
HTH,
Rob
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