Regex: Matching Characters NOT in a Certain Range

[Hal Vaughan]

I can't find this in the FAQ, but I thought it was. If I have a range of
characters, like [a-zA-Z], how can I specify that I want to match any
character NOT in that range? (Yes, I know this is close to /W and /w, but
this is only an example).

I thought I remembered a characer I could use to invert a match like this so
if I were doing:

$line =~ s/[a-zA-Z]/x/g;

that if I used it, I could replace all characters NOT matching that range
instead of the ones that do.

Is there such a way to do this, or do I mis-remember?

Thanks!

Hal

 

[Anno Siegel]

I can't find this in the FAQ, but I thought it was. If I have a range of
characters, like [a-zA-Z], how can I specify that I want to match any
character NOT in that range? (Yes, I know this is close to /W and /w, but
this is only an example).

I thought I remembered a characer I could use to invert a match like this so
if I were doing:

$line =~ s/[a-zA-Z]/x/g;

that if I used it, I could replace all characters NOT matching that range
instead of the ones that do.

Have you looked at perlre? You're looking for "^".

Anno

 

[Hal Vaughan]

I can't find this in the FAQ, but I thought it was. If I have a range of
characters, like [a-zA-Z], how can I specify that I want to match any
character NOT in that range? (Yes, I know this is close to /W and /w,
but this is only an example).

I thought I remembered a characer I could use to invert a match like this
so if I were doing:

$line =~ s/[a-zA-Z]/x/g;

that if I used it, I could replace all characters NOT matching that range
instead of the ones that do.

Have you looked at perlre? You're looking for "^".

That's it!

I can never remember all the terms to search for. I tried regular
expression, regex and re. Forgot perlre.

I thought ^ was to match the beginning of a line, so my brain just wouldn't
accept it -- and I forgot to put it INSIDE the brackets!

Thanks!

Hal

 

[A. Sinan Unur]

Anno Siegel wrote:
....

....

I can never remember all the terms to search for.

perldoc perltoc

Sinan

 

[Alan J. Flavell]

That's it!

I can never remember all the terms to search for. I tried regular
expression, regex and re. Forgot perlre.

I thought ^ was to match the beginning of a line, so my brain just
wouldn't accept it -- and I forgot to put it INSIDE the brackets!

You have to keep a clear distinction between the mini syntax which
applies for character classes (inside [ ] ), and the more usual syntax
in regular expressions in general.

 

[Hal Vaughan]

perldoc perltoc

Thanks. I never knew that! (Seriously -- I was used to searching for
terms, but never new there was a toc!)

Hal

 

[Tad McClellan]

Thanks. I never knew that! (Seriously -- I was used to searching for
terms, but never new there was a toc!)

Then you must have not even tried the somewhat obvious:

perldoc perl

which also lists the std docs, including the ToC.