Question

$line = " TEST: asdas :asd asdasad s";

if ($line =~ /(.*):(.*)/
{
  print "$1  = $2 "
}

I was expecting TEST =asdas :asd asdasad s

But it’s not working. What is issue?

Answer 1

The correct way would be:

/([^:]+):(.*)/

or

/(.+?):(.*)/

This way, you’re not matching “anything” on the left. You’re matching “one or more non-colon characters” in the first example, or “matching the shortest possible string of any characters followed by a colon” in the second.

The even better way is to not use a regex. Use split.

my ($left, $right) = split(/:/, $line, 2);

The ,2 says “I want at most two fields”.