RE: [Perl-unix-users] requesting regular expresion help

[Dave Blakemore]

Thanks everyone.....    I got 3 suggestions, 2 almost worked, and one (Bruce) worked right out of the box...

 

    # Matt  if (m/^\s*(\w+)\s*=\s*(.+?)\s*$/) {

           almost:  however it matched the condition of "nothing but white space after the ="

           which I wanted to eliminate.
    # Chad  if (   m/^\s*(\w+)\s*=\s*(\".+\*|\w+)\s*$/ ) {

           Missed the quoted string in data such as "this is some data"

    # Bruce if (m/^\s*(\w+)\s*=\s*(.*\S)\s*$/) {
          This one worked like a charm...

Matt Schneider <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Dave,

 

This is untested but you might try something like this:

m/^\s*(.+?)\s*=\s*(.+?)\s*$/; # the "?" cause the ".+" to match the minimum.

$user{$stanza}{$1} = $2 unless $2 eq "";

 

Matthew Schneider

System Admin / Programmer

SKLD Information Services, LLC

303-820-0863

 

---

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dave Blakemore
Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2005 9:25 AM
To: perl-unix-users@listserv.ActiveState.com
Subject: [Perl-unix-users] requesting regular expresion help

There has to be a better way, but cannot figure it out (see below)

 

The problem lies with the regex:

  m/^\s*(\w+)\s*=\s*(.+)$/
 

which is trying to match lines in a /etc/security/user file in the format:

 

item = data

 

The /^\s*(\w+)\s*=\s* part works fine being that "item" if well defined as being a single word.

 

It is the (.+)$ bit that is bothering me, and because I could not come up with an adequate

solution I had to add the following two lines to get the thing to work.

      $item = $1; $data = "" $data =~ s/\s*$//;
      $user{$stanza}{$item} = $data unless $data eq "";
Instead of just being able to do:

      $user{$stanza}{$1} = $2;

The problem is:  "data" can consist of and needs to match or notmatch any of the following:

 

do not match these

1)   a null  as in nothing whatsoever following the "=" ignore this one don't want it

2)  any amount of white space following the "=" again ignore this one don;t want it

 

match these but trim any trailing space

1)  a quoted string "something like this"

2)  a single word   

3) either of the above but with trailing white space that would need to be trimed before

    being asigned to the hash.      such as /"something like this"   /

 

My current solution works.... but those two additional lines seem ugly, is there a way I can do it all from within the regex?

 

< --- code ---- >

while ( <USER> ) {
   next if (/^\s*(\*|$)/);
   if(  m/^(\S.*):/ ){
      $stanza = $1;
      next;
   }
   if (m/^\s*(\w+)\s*=\s*(.+)$/) {
      $item = $1; $data = "" $data =~ s/\s*$//;
      $user{$stanza}{$item} = $data unless $data eq "";
   }
}
foreach $stanza (sort keys %user) {
   foreach $item (sort keys %{$user{$stanza}}) {
   print "$stanza: $item = [${%{$user{$stanza}}}{$item}]\n";
   }
}

< --- code ---- >

 

--

db

_______________________

Dave Blakemore
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

_______________________

Dave Blakemore
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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