Question

I am trying to use Perl to search through an html file, looking for a semi-random string and store the match in a variable or print it out.

The string is the name of a jpg image and always follows the pattern of 9 digits followed by 6 lower case letters, i.e.

140005917smpxgj.jpg

But it is random every time. I am sure Perl can do this, but I will admit I am getting a bit confused.

Answer 1

Not too complicated. You may want to watch out for varying caps in the extension, e.g. JPG. If that is a concern, you may add (?i) before the extension.

You may also wish to prevent partial names, e.g. discard a match that has more than 9 digits. That is the (?<!\d) part: Make sure no digit characters precede the match.

ETA: Now extracts multiple matches too, thanks to ikegami.

while (<>) {
    for (/(?<!\d)([0-9]{9}[a-z]{6}\.(?i)jpg)/g) {
        say;
        push @match, $_;
    }
}