shani@TAURUS.BITNET (05/27/90)
Hi. I hope someone will help me to figure this out: When I use the matching operator on something like "cp" =~ /cp\s*@*\s*/ it matches, and I think it shouldn't because as far as I understand, only expressions of the form "cp\s*@*\s*" (that is - cp\s<anything>@<anything>\s<anything> ) should have matched the pattern, and "cp" does not even include the '@' ! Even more confusing is the fact that "cp aa@bb cc" matches (which I expected), but $+ = "cp " !!! Could anyone help? I want only "cp\s<anything>@<anything>\s<anything>" to match. Thanks in advance O.S.
news@genrad.UUCP (Network News) (05/28/90)
along the line (TAURUS.BITNET), so I have to resort to posting. From: rep@genrad.com (Pete Peterson) Path: rep In article <1336@taurus.BITNET> <shani%math.tau.ac.il@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU> writes: >When I use the matching operator on something like > >"cp" =~ /cp\s*@*\s*/ > >it matches, and I think it shouldn't because as far as I understand, >only expressions of the form "cp\s*@*\s*" (that is - >cp\s<anything>@<anything>\s<anything> ) should have matched the pattern, and >"cp" does not even include the '@' ! Even more confusing is the fact that >"cp aa@bb cc" matches (which I expected), but $+ = "cp " !!! > I think that your only problem is that you're confusing "*" in regexps with "*" in shell syntax. In regular expressions, RE* means ZERO OR MORE occurrences of the regexp RE. To indicate "anything" corresponding to "*" in shell syntax, you need ".*" where "." is a regexp which matches "anything" and "*" means zero or more occurrences. In your example (cp aa@bb cc), "cp " was matched by "cp\s*" AND also by "cp\s*@*\s*" which couldn't match any longer string because there was nothing to match the "a". > >Could anyone help? I want only "cp\s<anything>@<anything>\s<anything>" to >match. > I think that what you really want is "cp\s.*@.*\s.*" wherein "cp" matches "cp" each "\s" matches some whitespace, "@" matches "@" and each ".*" matches an arbitrary string of characters. Let me know if this isn't clear and I'll try again. pete peterson rep@genrad.com {decvax,linus,wjh12,mit-eddie,masscomp}!genrad!rep
worley@compass.com (Dale Worley) (05/29/90)
From: shani@TAURUS.BITNET
Could anyone help? I want only "cp\s<anything>@<anything>\s<anything>" to
match.
Use "cp" =~ /cp\s.*@.*\s.*/
Otherwise, the *'s modify the \s's and @ that preceeds them.
Dale Worley Compass, Inc. worley@compass.com
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Just say N O!
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