Question

I am trying to write a regular expression but I can’t pass the words space

I have a data file like this (generated by another utility)

* field      : 100
blahbla      : <Set>
scree        : <what>
.Cont.asasd  :
Othreaol     : Value, Other value
Point->IP    : 0.0.0.0 Port 5060

The pattern has to match and capture data like this

"field" "100"
"blahbla" "<Set>"
"scree" "<what>"
".Cont.asasd" ""
"Othreaol" "Value, Other value"

My early solution is

/^([\s\*]+)([\w]+[\s\.\-\>]{0,2}[\w]+)(\s*\:\s)(.*)/

but I have problem with some strings like

Z.15 example : No

the space stops the pattern from matching

H.25 miss here : No

same thing here

Answer 1

I don’t understand why the Point->IP line is omitted from your example output, but something like the code below should suit you.

use strict;
use warnings;

while (<DATA>) {
  next unless /([^\s*].+?)\s*:\s*(.*?)\s*$/;
  printf qq("%s" "%s"\n), $1, $2;
}

__DATA__

  * field      : 100
  blahbla      : <Set>
  scree        : <what>
  .Cont.asasd  :
  Othreaol     : Value, Other value
  Point->IP    : 0.0.0.0 Port 5060
  Z.15 example : No
  H.25 miss here : No

output

"field" "100"
"blahbla" "<Set>"
"scree" "<what>"
".Cont.asasd" ""
"Othreaol" "Value, Other value"
"Point->IP" "0.0.0.0 Port 5060"
"Z.15 example" "No"
"H.25 miss here" "No"