how to match front and end of a sentence using regexp?

[poolboi]

hi, this is somewhat link to the other post i posted
but i shall put it in another topic for easy reference

previously i had

/* 4 ABC:DEFG=12334556,BSERV=T22; */
 

i actualli used the regexp to match it

    foreach $data1 (@$data)
    {
      chomp ($data1); 
    if ($data1 =~ /4 \D\D\D:/){
      print "$data1\n";     
      } }
 

but right how can i just get

 
ABC:DEFG=12334556,BSERV=T22;
 

i tried using

$data =~ /\D\D\D.*;/;
 

didn't work..so i'm not too sure about the syntax

[nithinpes]

Use:

foreach $data1 (@$data)
    {
      chomp ($data1); 
    if ($data1 =~ /4 (\D\D\D:.+)\*/){
      print "$1\n";  # $1 will hold the pattern inside parantheses
      } }
 

[nithinpes]

The title of your post doesn't match your description. If you actually wanted to match begining and end of a line, here is how to do it.
The symbol '^' will denote beginning of line/string inside pattern match. For ex:
/^The/ will match only the lines begining with 'The'.

Similarly, the symbol '$' will denote end of line/string inside pattern match. For ex:
/end$/ will match only the lines ending with 'end'.

[poolboi]

hm...thanks nithinpes

i might need the code for beginning and end of statements

i guess for this case it should somehow be match a part of a sentence ending with special characters like "*", "%", and stuff

anyway if i use ".*" it matches 1 character 0 or more times right?
and ".+" it matches 1 character 1 or more times right?

[nithinpes]

hm...thanks nithinpes

i might need the code for beginning and end of statements

i guess for this case it should somehow be match a part of a sentence ending with special characters like "*", "%", and stuff

anyway if i use ".*" it matches 1 character 0 or more times right?
and ".+" it matches 1 character 1 or more times right?

Yes. That's right!
One way of matching special characters is to escape them(using '\'). For example in your text, if you wanted to match lines with '/* 4' you could use,

if ($data1 =~ /\/\* 4/) { 
 

Also, you could use \Q and \E. \Q will remove any special meaning, inside pattern match, of the characters that follow it upto \E.
For ex:

if ($data1 =~ /\Q/* @+/\E/) { # will match '/* @+/'
if ($data1 =~ /\Q/* ...\E.+/) {# will match '/* ...' followed by one/more characters
 

I would suggest you to go through this:
Perl RE

-Nithin

[poolboi]

alright
thanks you very much nithin
was looking for some reference too
thanks!
cheers, :)

[poolboi]

hey guys another question to ponder about

how long u think it takes to do a search on my code below
roughly around 2,375 KB of data

foreach $data1 (@data)
{
chomp ($data1); 
 
if ($data1 =~ /3 SESSION/ && $data1 !~ /2 TBHLR/ && $data1 !~ /1 TBHLR/ && $data1 !~ /4c COMMAND/ && $data1 !~ /4c 
SESSION/){
 
my $user_line = index ($data1, "3 SESSION");
my $user = substr ($data1, ($user_line+23),6);
push @array1,$user;
 
my $time_line = index ($data1, "USERID");
my $time = substr ($data1, ($time_line+25),8); 
push @array2,"$time\n";
 
push @array3, "$date\n";
 
}elsif
($data1 =~ /4 (\D\D\D:.+)\*/){
push @array4, "$1\n";
 
}}
 

and all these datas are added into MySQL database
i time it and ard 5-6 mins
u think it's already considered fast?