[plug] A question for perl hackers

[Mark Rattigan]

> As I step through an array with foreach I would like to assign the
filesize
> in bytes (the first number) to a variable.  I need to match:
>
> (1) zero or any number of spaces occuring at the beginning of the string:
> ^  *  (a guess)

I think you're right. /^ */.

> (2) any number of continuous digits:
> [0-9*]  (even bigger guess)

AFAIK, should be /[0-9]*/

> (3) followed by a single space

/ /


> Putting that all together I get:
> /^ *[0-9*] /  (probably wrong!)

/^ *[0-9]* /
should be right, as far as I know.. I only started learning perl last week
at uni, so I may be slightly wrong too..

> The problem is that I don't want to just match a pattern, I want to assign
> the match to a variable and this is what has me a bit lost.  In case it is
> not blindingly obvious, I am just learning perl.  I have written a few cgi
> scripts before but that's about it.

$theline = "     3402138 aslkfj;dj;jksjfda blahblahblah......";
$theline =~ /^ *[0-9]* /;
$thematch = $&;


$thematch should then hold "     3402138 "


I'm hoping that's correct. I'm not absolutely sure.

Mark