At this point could a user still input something like 7mary3. Ideally a user can enter a name or several separated by commas but *nothing* else. Convention would be lowercase firstinitiallastname It seems like Rob's is really close but I don't understand all of the code. I am a little shy with arrays. Is @names built as you go? And, is the input all one element? It seems to me as if that is the case but not 100% sure.
-----Original Message----- From: Rob Dixon [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 10:43 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: regular expressions Hi Paul See below. "Paul Kraus" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message 021b01c2b7f3$490ed540$64fea8c0@pkrausxp">news:021b01c2b7f3$490ed540$64fea8c0@pkrausxp... > Correct me if I am wrong but wouldn't > @names = sprit /,/,$ans; That's pretty much what I did, except that I added optional leading and trailing whitespace to the regex so that these would be trimmed from the names. I didn't actually do the job properly though, because whitespace at the start and end of $ans won't be removed, and input like ' Henrietta' will fail. Nearly right though! > Then you could perform your tests against the array elements. > if (/[A-Za-z]+/) Not really. That only checks to see if the name contains at least one alpha. I did {/[^a-zA-Z]/ which checks for at least one non-alpha, when the loop continues and reports an error. Also you don't need the '+' modifier. > Assuming that the names would only contain those characters. > > or if (/\w+/) meaning all word characters. /\W/ would do in my code, but its unwholesome inclusion of the underscore in a valid 'word' character makes it much less useful for non-programming apps. > > Do the same thing. Splitting everything separated by a comma? Unsure what you mean here :-? I'll pretend you didn't say it. Cheers, Rob > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Rob Dixon [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > > Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 10:06 AM > > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Subject: Re: regular expressions > > > > > > Hello, erm, "Evan N Mr Niso/Lockheed Martin Kehayias" > > > > This should do what you want: > > > > > > my @names; > > do { > > errmesg() if @names; > > my $ans = <STDIN>; > > @names = split /\s*,\s*/, $ans; > > } while (grep {/[^a-zA-Z]/} @names); > > > > which splits on commas with any amount of preceding and > > trailing whitespace. Names have to be alphabetic. > > > > HTH, > > > > Rob > > > > > > "Evan N Mr Niso/Lockheed Martin Kehayias" > > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message > > 90AFE0B84E52EE46A8CD1DB0789C0A860ED043@DADC144">news:90AFE0B84E52EE46A8CD1DB0789C0A860ED043@DADC144... > > > Greetings, > > > > > > I am attempting to limit entries a user could make when inputting > > > names > > into > > > one of my scripts. I prompt the user to enter one or more > > names. One > > name > > > is easy to isolate but when there are more I want to > > support commas. > > > At > > the > > > same time I don't want to accept anything other than names > > and commas. > > > I want to force the user to either enter names correctly or > > exit. For > > > that matter it would be really cool if I could test the > > names against > > > /etc/passwd. But beggars can't be choosers I will tackle the array > > > piece later. > > > > > > What the user sees: > > > > > > Please enter user name(s): > > > If more than one separate using commas > > > example (single name): evan > > > example (multi name): debbie, clint, henry > > > > > > > > > > > > So far what broken pieces I have... > > > > > > #!/usr/bin/perl > > > > > > > > > while($ans !~ /^[a-z]+$/ || $ans !~ /^[a-z]+\,?[a-z]*$/) { > > > errmesg (); > > > $ans = <STDIN>; > > > > > > }; > > > > > > sub errmesg { > > > print "\nType user name(s) and press enter:\n"; > > > print "note: if more than one separate using commas\n"; > > > print "example (single name): evan\n"; > > > print "example (multi name): debbie, clint, henry\n"; > > > } > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
