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Date:      Fri, 9 Feb 2001 11:46:51 +0000 (GMT)
From:      Jan Grant <Jan.Grant@bristol.ac.uk>
To:        John Indra <john@office.naver.co.id>
Cc:        freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: Crafting Perl RE...
Message-ID:  <Pine.GSO.4.31.0102091145380.14282-100000@mail.ilrt.bris.ac.uk>
In-Reply-To: <20010209160849.A97806@office.naver.co.id>

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On Fri, 9 Feb 2001, John Indra wrote:

> Hi...
>
> Simple question but I don't know the answer. Suppose I have this string:
> somefile.ins.jpg. I want to craft a Perl RE so it captures the jpg part. I
> try this RE:
>
> $string =~ m#\.(.*)$#
>
> Unfortunately $1 captures ins.jpg, not jpg as I want.
>
> What RE to get it right?

man perlre; you're looking for the section that starts

 By default, a quantified subpattern is "greedy", that is,
       it will match as many times as possible (given a
       particular starting location) while still allowing the
       rest of the pattern to match.  If you want it to match the
       minimum number of times possible, follow the quantifier
       with a "?".  Note that the meanings don't change, just the
       "greediness":

in other words, use \.(.*?)$

-- 
jan grant, ILRT, University of Bristol. http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/
Tel +44(0)117 9287163 Fax +44 (0)117 9287112 RFC822 jan.grant@bris.ac.uk
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