Question

I think I’m missing something simple here…

$key = "deco-1-LB-700F:MAR:40";
  if ($key =~ m/deco-(.*?)-(.*?)-(.*?):(.*?):(.*?)/) {
      print "1=$1 2=$2 3=$3 4=$4 5=$5";
  }

This results in the output: 1=1 2=LB 3=700F 4=MAR 5=

Why isn’t $5 returning the value 40 ?

Cheers, Stu

Answer 1

Because .*? is lazy and will match zero characters if it can. Anchor the regex to the end of the string:

$key =~ m/deco-(.*?)-(.*?)-(.*?):(.*?):(.*?)$/

But it’s nearly always better to use something more explicit than the catch-all .* and .*?. Tell the regex engine exactly what you want to allow to match. Assuming that the delimiters - and : never occur in the actual matches, I suggest

$key =~ m/deco-([^-]*)-([^-]*)-([^:]*):([^:]*):([^:]*)$/

• [^-] means “match any character except -“.
• [^:] means “match any character except :“.