Perl: Better way to match string within a string

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi,

I'm trying to get one field out of many as follows:

A string of multiple fields separated with "/" characters:
"/ab=12/cd=34/12=ab/34=cd/ef=pick-this.one/gh=blah/ij=something/"

I want to pick up the field "ef=pick-this.one" which has no regular pattern except it starts with "ef=xxxx" and ends to a "/"

I wrote a little script to get it, but I'm just wondering if there is some better way of doing this(using Perl):

$ ./matchtest.pl
Unwated beginning: /ab=12/cd=34/12=ab/34=cd/
Unwated ending: /gh=blah/ij=something/
Wanted string: pick-this.one

Using this code:

#!/usr/bin/perl

my($text) = "/ab=12/cd=34/12=ab/34=cd/ef=pick-this.one/gh=blah/ij=something/";
my($prefix,$string,$postfix) = $text =~ m/(.*\/)(ef.*?)(\/.*)$/;
print "Unwated beginning: $prefix\n";
print "Unwated ending: $postfix\n";
$string =~ s/ef=//g;
print "Wanted string: $string\n";
2

If I understand correctly:

$ perl -le'
   $s = "/ab=12/cd=34/12=ab/34=cd/ef=pick-this.one/gh=blah/ij=something/";
   print $s =~ m|ef=(.*?)/|;
  '
pick-this.one
3

the pattern to use is:

my $text = "/ab=12/cd=34/12=ab/34=cd/ef=pick-this.one/gh=blah/ij=something/";
my ($ef) = $text =~ m|/ef=([^/]+)/|;
print $ef;
4

Late thanks for your replies guys :slight_smile: works fine!

//Juha