Question

how to extract this string using regular expression

||03/15/2012||10:17:11|FOR TEST

I want to extract “03/15/2012” . I have tried this command

my $firstLine =~ m/^\|\|\d{2}\/\d{2}\/\d{4}\|\|/i ;
trace("first line extraction : $firstLine first $1");

It doesn’t work. could you please help ?

thanks

Answer 1

You need to use a capturing group () around the part you want to extract:

my $line = '||03/15/2012||10:17:11|FOR TEST';
if ($line =~ m/^\|\|(\d{2}\/\d{2}\/\d{4})\|\|/i) {
  # Capturing group ┴───────────────────┘
  print("Group 1: $1\n"); # 03/15/2012
}