Regular Expressions :: introduction

Regular expressions are a mini-language for matching patterns in strings so that you can find, replace, and/or capture parts of strings. One way to think of this is as "math for strings." *

• match operator: string =~ m/regex/

  returns true if match found, false otherwise

• negative match operator: string !~ m/regex/

  returns true if match NOT found, false if match found

• simplest use is with conditionals:

  # to test if a pattern is there
  my $string = "has a\ttab";
  if ($string =~ m/\t/)
  {
     print "has a tab\n";
  }
  else
  {
     print "has NO tabs\n";
  }
  
  
  

A few examples in this section have been generously provided by A. Lewin, A Lin, J. Deri, et al: Harvard Extension School :: Practical Perl.