Hi guys,

Im trying to fix an aging system created by someone many moons ago.

What is this matching?

More importantly, what does the =~ mean? and the (.*) in the IF?



foreach my $line (@registars) {
chomp $line;
if($line =~ /<tr><td>(.*)<\/td><td>(.*)<\/td><\/tr>/) {
$isps{$1} = "$1 ($2)";
$tag[$i++] = $1;
}
}

As per, Once ive posted ive figured it out and fixed it! typical.

Looks like
if($line =~ /<tr><td>(.*)<\/td><td>(.*)<\/td><\/tr>/) {

Means ( or along the lines of )

if ($line islike STRING ignoring (.*) bits inbetween.

Anywho.
This can be closed / removed.

Grrrrrr

I need a dummy forum i can post in and if i still cant figure it out after 30 mins, it will post to here lol

just to clarify the (.*) actually means:

"match any number of any characters"

(includes spaces but excludes line breaks.)

Ahh ok,

So it will match <tr><td>(.*)<\/td><td>(.*)<\/td><\/tr>

But wont care about whats inbetween the bold?

While i didnt realise that, i still manage to get some 1998 code working again. Yeahhhhhh hehe

Ty chris.

You could reduce that to

<tr(.*)\/tr>

That would match everything between the first <tr and the last /tr> in the line , because your expression would match the middle bolded section anyway.

Regular expressions using (.*) are "greedy" and will match as much as possible.

Ah yeah true, I didnt see that.
Ill keep that in mind for when it break again ( Im sure it will )

It like being told to sit on an old rotten fence and asked not to break it.