Curtis,
thanks for your email. My $args is just a string. Would that make any
difference?
-r
Curtis Poe wrote:
>
> --- Rasoul Hajikhani <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Hi there,
> > I am trying to match an expression that would perform different tasks
> > depending on the returned value:
> >
> > #if (arguments begin with "<A HREF=")
> > if ($args =~ /^\<A HREF=.*/i)
> > {
> > # do this
> > }
> > else
> > {
> > # do this
> > }
> >
> > but it always fails to return any thing. Can some one tell me what am I
> > doing wrong? Appreciate all the help...
> > -r
>
> Parding HTML with a regular expression is difficult and error-prone. I would
>strongly recommend
> against. The following snippet only works for a very small test case:
>
> foreach my $args ( <DATA> ) {
> if ($args =~ /^<\s*a\s*href\s*=/i) {
> print "HREF: $args";
> } else {
> print "Not and HREF: $args";
> }
> }
> __DATA__
> <a href="test.cgi">
> <a hREf = "something_else.htm">
> <a name="bob">
> <a href = '#bob'>
>
> Knowing how your data gets into the system is at least as important as how your data
>leaves the
> system. Knowing your data source allows you to craft a better solution to the
>problem. For
> example, consider your regex:
>
> /^\<A HREF=.*/i
>
> What is the source of the data? Is it generated by another process or could humans
>affect it?
> There are several places where you can insert whitespace into that anchor tag, have
>valid HTML,
> and cause your regex to fail. Here's an example which will break code *and* mine:
>
> <a
> href=
> "somefile.html"
> >
>
> That's annoying, but some of the documents I get have HTML formatted like that.
>Also, you don't
> need the dot star at the end. You don't use that information and forcing the regex
>engine to
> match it is wasteful.
>
> I would recommend learning to use HTML::TokeParser or a similar module to parse
>HTML. If you are
> only extracting links, try HTML::LinkExtor.
>
> Cheers,
> Curtis "Ovid" Poe
>
> =====
> Senior Programmer
> Onsite! Technology (http://www.onsitetech.com/)
> "Ovid" on http://www.perlmonks.org/
>
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