Perl Whitespace Reg Expression

[Bill Campbell]

On Sun, Oct 09, 2005, Jorge Almeida wrote:
>On Sat, 8 Oct 2005, Steve Jardine wrote:
>
>> Alright you Perl Heads, here's one for you.
>> 
>>     I have a line like this:
>> 
>> 
>>     abcdef<1 to many spaces>more text
>> 
>> 
>>     I want to use the splt command so I can get to the "more text" part of the
>> line, but I do not know how many spaces there may be - it could vary. So, 
>> 
>> @line = split(/ /, $_); 
>> $line[1] = ...
>> 
>@line = split(/ +/, $_);

Actually split automatically splits on whitespace and also defaults to the
$_ input so this will work:

my @line = split();

In perl regular express ``\s'' is shorthand for whitespace, and ``\S''
shorthand for NOT whitespace so this should work as well:

my @line = split('\s', $_);

FWIW:  Python also uses perl-style regular expressions, and the pcre
package provides a grep substitute, ``pcregrep'' that uses them as well.

Bill
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