Question

I have a string where different predefined keywords introduce different data. Is there a way to do that using clever use of regexp, or something? Here is an example:

Keywords can be "first name: " and "last name: ". Now I want to parse:

"character first name: Han last name: Solo"

into

{ "first name: " => "Han ", "last name: " => "Solo" }

Of course, the order of the keywords in the input string is not fixed. This should also work on :

"character last name: Solo first name: Han"

I understand there are issues to be raised with spaces and so on. I’ll ignore them here.

I know how to solve this problem looping on the different keywords, but I don’t find that very pretty.

Split almost fits the bill. Its only problem is that it returns an array and not a hash, so I don’t know which is the first name or the last name.

My example is somewhat misleading. Here is another one:

my @keywords = ("marker 1", "marker 2", "marker 3");
my $rawString = "beginning marker 1 one un marker 2 two deux marker 3 three trois and the rest";
my %result;
# <grind result>
print Dumper(\%result);

will print:

$VAR1 = {
      'marker 2' => ' two deux ',
      'marker 3' => ' three trois and the rest',
      'marker 1' => ' one un '
    };

Answer 1

Here is a solution using split (with separator retention mode) that is extensible with other keys:

use warnings;
use strict;

my $str = "character first name: Han last name: Solo";

my @keys = ('first name:', 'last name:');

my $regex = join '|' => @keys;

my ($prefix, %hash) = split /($regex)\s*/ => $str;

print "$_ $hash{$_}\n" for keys %hash;

which prints:

last name: Solo
first name: Han 

To handle keys that contain regex metacharacters, replace the my $regex = ... line with:

 my $regex = join '|' => map {quotemeta} @keys;