perlrequick.pod

MSYS在windows下模拟了一个类unix的终端

=head1 NAME

perlrequick - Perl regular expressions quick start

=head1 DESCRIPTION

This page covers the very basics of understanding, creating and
using regular expressions ('regexes') in Perl.


=head1 The Guide

=head2 Simple word matching

The simplest regex is simply a word, or more generally, a string of
characters.  A regex consisting of a word matches any string that
contains that word:

    "Hello World" =~ /World/;  # matches

In this statement, C<World> is a regex and the C<//> enclosing
C</World/> tells perl to search a string for a match.  The operator
C<=~> associates the string with the regex match and produces a true
value if the regex matched, or false if the regex did not match.  In
our case, C<World> matches the second word in C<"Hello World">, so the
expression is true.  This idea has several variations.

Expressions like this are useful in conditionals:

    print "It matches\n" if "Hello World" =~ /World/;

The sense of the match can be reversed by using C<!~> operator:

    print "It doesn't match\n" if "Hello World" !~ /World/;

The literal string in the regex can be replaced by a variable:

    $greeting = "World";
    print "It matches\n" if "Hello World" =~ /$greeting/;

If you're matching against C<$_>, the C<$_ =~> part can be omitted:

    $_ = "Hello World";
    print "It matches\n" if /World/;

Finally, the C<//> default delimiters for a match can be changed to
arbitrary delimiters by putting an C<'m'> out front:

    "Hello World" =~ m!World!;   # matches, delimited by '!'
    "Hello World" =~ m{World};   # matches, note the matching '{}'
    "/usr/bin/perl" =~ m"/perl"; # matches after '/usr/bin',
                                 # '/' becomes an ordinary char

Regexes must match a part of the string I<exactly> in order for the
statement to be true:

    "Hello World" =~ /world/;  # doesn't match, case sensitive
    "Hello World" =~ /o W/;    # matches, ' ' is an ordinary char
    "Hello World" =~ /World /; # doesn't match, no ' ' at end

perl will always match at the earliest possible point in the string:

    "Hello World" =~ /o/;       # matches 'o' in 'Hello'
    "That hat is red" =~ /hat/; # matches 'hat' in 'That'

Not all characters can be used 'as is' in a match.  Some characters,
called B<metacharacters>, are reserved for use in regex notation.
The metacharacters are

    {}[]()^$.|*+?\

A metacharacter can be matched by putting a backslash before it:

    "2+2=4" =~ /2+2/;    # doesn't match, + is a metacharacter
    "2+2=4" =~ /2\+2/;   # matches, \+ is treated like an ordinary +
    'C:\WIN32' =~ /C:\\WIN/;                       # matches
    "/usr/bin/perl" =~ /\/usr\/local\/bin\/perl/;  # matches

In the last regex, the forward slash C<'/'> is also backslashed,
because it is used to delimit the regex.

Non-printable ASCII characters are represented by B<escape sequences>.
Common examples are C<\t> for a tab, C<\n> for a newline, and C<\r>
for a carriage return.  Arbitrary bytes are represented by octal
escape sequences, e.g., C<\033>, or hexadecimal escape sequences,
e.g., C<\x1B>:

    "1000\t2000" =~ m(0\t2)        # matches
    "cat"        =~ /\143\x61\x74/ # matches, but a weird way to spell cat

Regexes are treated mostly as double quoted strings, so variable
substitution works:

    $foo = 'house';
    'cathouse' =~ /cat$foo/;   # matches
    'housecat' =~ /${foo}cat/; # matches

With all of the regexes above, if the regex matched anywhere in the
string, it was considered a match.  To specify I<where> it should
match, we would use the B<anchor> metacharacters C<^> and C<$>.  The
anchor C<^> means match at the beginning of the string and the anchor
C<$> means match at the end of the string, or before a newline at the
end of the string.  Some examples:

    "housekeeper" =~ /keeper/;         # matches
    "housekeeper" =~ /^keeper/;        # doesn't match
    "housekeeper" =~ /keeper$/;        # matches
    "housekeeper\n" =~ /keeper$/;      # matches
    "housekeeper" =~ /^housekeeper$/;  # matches

=head2 Using character classes

A B<character class> allows a set of possible characters, rather than
just a single character, to match at a particular point in a regex.
Character classes are denoted by brackets C<[...]>, with the set of
characters to be possibly matched inside.  Here are some examples:

    /cat/;            # matches 'cat'
    /[bcr]at/;        # matches 'bat', 'cat', or 'rat'
    "abc" =~ /[cab]/; # matches 'a'

In the last statement, even though C<'c'> is the first character in
the class, the earliest point at which the regex can match is C<'a'>.

    /[yY][eE][sS]/; # match 'yes' in a case-insensitive way
                    # 'yes', 'Yes', 'YES', etc.
    /yes/i;         # also match 'yes' in a case-insensitive way

The last example shows a match with an C<'i'> B<modifier>, which makes
the match case-insensitive.

Character classes also have ordinary and special characters, but the
sets of ordinary and special characters inside a character class are
different than those outside a character class.  The special
characters for a character class are C<-]\^$> and are matched using an
escape:

   /[\]c]def/; # matches ']def' or 'cdef'
   $x = 'bcr';
   /[$x]at/;   # matches 'bat, 'cat', or 'rat'
   /[\$x]at/;  # matches '$at' or 'xat'
   /[\\$x]at/; # matches '\at', 'bat, 'cat', or 'rat'

The special character C<'-'> acts as a range operator within character
classes, so that the unwieldy C<[0123456789]> and C<[abc...xyz]>
become the svelte C<[0-9]> and C<[a-z]>:

    /item[0-9]/;  # matches 'item0' or ... or 'item9'
    /[0-9a-fA-F]/;  # matches a hexadecimal digit

If C<'-'> is the first or last character in a character class, it is
treated as an ordinary character.

The special character C<^> in the first position of a character class
denotes a B<negated character class>, which matches any character but
those in the brackets.  Both C<[...]> and C<[^...]> must match a
character, or the match fails.  Then

    /[^a]at/;  # doesn't match 'aat' or 'at', but matches
               # all other 'bat', 'cat, '0at', '%at', etc.
    /[^0-9]/;  # matches a non-numeric character
    /[a^]at/;  # matches 'aat' or '^at'; here '^' is ordinary

Perl has several abbreviations for common character classes:

=over 4

=item *

\d is a digit and represents [0-9]

=item *

\s is a whitespace character and represents [\ \t\r\n\f]

=item *

\w is a word character (alphanumeric or _) and represents [0-9a-zA-Z_]

=item *

\D is a negated \d; it represents any character but a digit [^0-9]

=item *

\S is a negated \s; it represents any non-whitespace character [^\s]

=item *

\W is a negated \w; it represents any non-word character [^\w]

=item *

The period '.' matches any character but "\n"

=back

The C<\d\s\w\D\S\W> abbreviations can be used both inside and outside
of character classes.  Here are some in use:

    /\d\d:\d\d:\d\d/; # matches a hh:mm:ss time format
    /[\d\s]/;         # matches any digit or whitespace character
    /\w\W\w/;         # matches a word char, followed by a
                      # non-word char, followed by a word char
    /..rt/;           # matches any two chars, followed by 'rt'
    /end\./;          # matches 'end.'
    /end[.]/;         # same thing, matches 'end.'

The S<B<word anchor> > C<\b> matches a boundary between a word
character and a non-word character C<\w\W> or C<\W\w>:

    $x = "Housecat catenates house and cat";
    $x =~ /\bcat/;  # matches cat in 'catenates'
    $x =~ /cat\b/;  # matches cat in 'housecat'
    $x =~ /\bcat\b/;  # matches 'cat' at end of string

In the last example, the end of the string is considered a word
boundary.

=head2 Matching this or that

We can match match different character strings with the B<alternation>
metacharacter C<'|'>.  To match C<dog> or C<cat>, we form the regex
C<dog|cat>.  As before, perl will try to match the regex at the
earliest possible point in the string.  At each character position,
perl will first try to match the the first alternative, C<dog>.  If
C<dog> doesn't match, perl will then try the next alternative, C<cat>.
If C<cat> doesn't match either, then the match fails and perl moves to
the next position in the string.  Some examples:

    "cats and dogs" =~ /cat|dog|bird/;  # matches "cat"
    "cats and dogs" =~ /dog|cat|bird/;  # matches "cat"

Even though C<dog> is the first alternative in the second regex,
C<cat> is able to match earlier in the string.

    "cats"          =~ /c|ca|cat|cats/; # matches "c"
    "cats"          =~ /cats|cat|ca|c/; # matches "cats"

At a given character position, the first alternative that allows the
regex match to succeed wil be the one that matches. Here, all the
alternatives match at the first string position, so th first matches.

=head2 Grouping things and hierarchical matching

The B<grouping> metacharacters C<()> allow a part of a regex to be
treated as a single unit.  Parts of a regex are grouped by enclosing
them in parentheses.  The regex C<house(cat|keeper)> means match
C<house> followed by either C<cat> or C<keeper>.  Some more examples
are

    /(a|b)b/;    # matches 'ab' or 'bb'