complete pattern matching

[Ela]

By using the following codes:

if ($aref1->[3] =~ /$tomatch/i) {
print "A:$tomatch\tB:$aref1->[3]\n";
<STDIN>;
last;
}

I discover that the program gives me a match for the following pair:

A:conserved hypothetical B:CONSERVED HYPOTHETICAL W

Indeed I expect that is a mismatch (but not the other way round for matching
A with B). How to enforce matching the whole expresson (i.e. including the
"W" in this case) ?

 

[Martien Verbruggen]

By using the following codes:

if ($aref1->[3] =~ /$tomatch/i) {
print "A:$tomatch\tB:$aref1->[3]\n";
<STDIN>;
last;
}

I discover that the program gives me a match for the following pair:

A:conserved hypothetical B:CONSERVED HYPOTHETICAL W

Indeed I expect that is a mismatch (but not the other way round for matching
A with B). How to enforce matching the whole expresson (i.e. including the
"W" in this case) ?

Anchor it at the front and back with ^ and $, or \A and \z. See the
perlre doucmentation for details.

But if you want to test for equality, it might be faster to simply
lowercase (or uppercase) both strings, and test with eq. If you know
that one of your astrings is always entirely upper or lower case, it
becomes even cheaper to do.

if (lc $aref1->[3] eq lc $tomatch) { ... }

Martien

 

[Martien Verbruggen]

By using the following codes:

if ($aref1->[3] =~ /$tomatch/i) {
print "A:$tomatch\tB:$aref1->[3]\n";
<STDIN>;
last;
}

I discover that the program gives me a match for the following pair:

A:conserved hypothetical B:CONSERVED HYPOTHETICAL W

Indeed I expect that is a mismatch (but not the other way round for matching
A with B). How to enforce matching the whole expresson (i.e. including the
"W" in this case) ?

Anchor it at the front and back with ^ and $, or \A and \z. See the
perlre doucmentation for details.

But if you want to test for equality, it might be faster and more
readable to simply lowercase (or uppercase) both strings, and test with
eq. If you know that one of your astrings is always entirely upper or
lower case, it becomes even cheaper to do.

if (lc $aref1->[3] eq lc $tomatch) { ... }

Martien

 

[Jürgen Exner]

By using the following codes:

if ($aref1->[3] =~ /$tomatch/i) {
print "A:$tomatch\tB:$aref1->[3]\n";
<STDIN>;
last;
}

I discover that the program gives me a match for the following pair:

A:conserved hypothetical B:CONSERVED HYPOTHETICAL W

Indeed I expect that is a mismatch (but not the other way round for matching
A with B). How to enforce matching the whole expresson (i.e. including the
"W" in this case) ?

If you really want RE matching then just anchor the search pattern ("^" and
"$").

If you just want to compare the two strings then comparing ("eq") their e.g.
lower case normal forms would be easier and faster and actually yield
correct results even in case the pattern contains RE special characters.

jue