Help with substitute in perl.

[Eric.Medlin]

For the string abc-12-asdfasdf.inc I want to get abc-12-. I can do the
opposite (ie. get asdfasdf.inc) with $name ~= s/.*-.*-//g, but how do I
replace not .*-.*- with blank. Thanks.

 

[Jürgen Exner]

For the string abc-12-asdfasdf.inc I want to get abc-12-. I can do
the opposite (ie. get asdfasdf.inc) with $name ~= s/.*-.*-//g, but
how do I replace not .*-.*- with blank. Thanks.

E.g.
use warnings; use strict;
my $name = 'abc-12-asdfasdf.inc';
substr($name, 0, 7, '');
print $name;
This code does exactly what you ask for in your example.

Now, if this is not what you meant, then maybe you need to explain the
general principle behind what to delete and what to return. One example is
certainly not enough to deduce a generic pattern.

jue

 

[Anno Siegel]

For the string abc-12-asdfasdf.inc I want to get abc-12-. I can do the
opposite (ie. get asdfasdf.inc) with $name ~= s/.*-.*-//g, but how do I
replace not .*-.*- with blank. Thanks.

One way:

s/[^-]*$//

Another:

( $_) = /(.*-.*-)/;

Anno

 

[Joe Smith]

For the string abc-12-asdfasdf.inc I want to get abc-12-. I can do the
opposite (ie. get asdfasdf.inc) with $name ~= s/.*-.*-//g, but how do I
replace not .*-.*- with blank. Thanks.

Why don't you simply print out the stuff that has been eliminated?

if (s/(.*-.*-)//) { print "Removed '$1' from the string\n"; }

or

if (my($first,$second) = $string =~ /(.*-.*-)(.*)/) {
print "first = '$first' and second = '$second' in '$string'\n";
}

-Joe