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pattern match anything before "dot"

I want to replace the filename name.exe with --FILE--.exe as part of my perl script.
Is there an easy way to do that with pattern matching?
Bascially, i want to match anything before ".exe", then replace them with "--FILE--".

use =~// to match
use =~s/// to substitute:

Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w 

use strict; 



while (<DATA>) {

        chomp $_;        # remove newline

        if ($_=~/\.exe$/) {        # check if input ends with .exe

                $_=~s/^\w+/--FILE--/;  # replace alphanumeric content at beginning

        }

        print "$_\n";

}



__DATA__

file.exe

this.exe

notthis.txt

more.exe

Output:
--FILE--.exe
--FILE--.exe
notthis.txt
--FILE--.exe

\w is an alphanumeric character
+ is one or more of the character
\. is a real period (. is anything)
^ indicates the beginning
$ indicates the end

Google "Rex Swain's HTMLified Perl 5 Reference Guide"; it's a great, very short quick reference that includes all the regular expression stuff.

Also perlmonks.com is a very active and helpful forum :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by ufmale (Post 3410030)

You can use sed to do this, if you want ALL the files to be "--FILE--.exe".

$variable =~ s/<variable where your input comes from>/"--FILE--.exe"/;

Check the syntax, though...not sure that's right. :)