Explanation:
($new_String = $old_string) =~ s/(href=.*?)(>)/$1 target="_blank"$2/gims;
($new_String = $old_string)
This sets the $new string to what is equal to the other side of =~,
it just eliminates the need for a temp variable so you get to keep
the original.
s/(href=.*?)(>)/$1 target="_blank"$2/gims;
s/// is the substitution command
the ( ) in the left side of s/// is to store the $1 and $2 vars of the
search through $old_string. Then on the right it puts what it found
back in and puts what you want {target="_blank"} in between
them {$1 target="_blank"$2}.
/(href=.*?)(>)/
First, it looks for href= and everything behind it up to the next >.
.* is a wild card to grab anything (including white space like new
lines {\n}, tabs {\t}, etc.), the ? behind it makes it non-greedy. So
(href=.*?) will find everything from href= until it reaches > and
stops (before the >). The reason I did it this way was so you can
have multiple href's in the entire string. If not, the regex would snag
everything from the first href to the last > or the string. Then you
need to have the > to follow your insertion of target="_blank".
gism
These are modifiers to the s///. g is for global replacement, i is for
case insensitive, m treats the string as multiple lines (probably not
needed, but just put in there to be complete), s is to treat your
string as a single line no matter how many new lines are in it.
An excellent book on regex's is Mastering Regular Expressions by
Orielly.
Shawn
----- Original Message -----
From: "Henry Potter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Shawn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, December 04, 2000 9:25 PM
Subject: Re: Help on regular expression
> Thanks Shawn! it worked!
> btw do you mind explaining how the regular expression functions?
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