Regex: How do I put this on one line? (Time-date parsing)

FuzzieDice · 01-22-2009, 11:15 AM

I'm not great at regex so I'll try to explain what I have.

Code:

$line = "Log Created: [12/Dec/2008:06:35:15 -0800] by MyScript on 'ubuntu 8.04 LTS' - - Details: 1/2/3";

$stime = $& if $line =~ /\[.+\]/;
$stime =~ s/^\[//;
$stime =~ s/\]$//;
print "$stime\n";

Would like to put this into $stime in one line instead of 3 so that $stime would have "12/Dec/2008:06:35:15 -0800".

Someone know how to do this?

Telemachos · 01-22-2009, 11:23 AM

If I understand you, and the lines look like your sample does, it's not too bad. Essentially you want to capture everything in between [ and ] and leave the time stuff in the order it's found. This works using Perl:

Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my $line = "Log Created: [12/Dec/2008:06:35:15 -0800] by MyScript on 'ubuntu 8.04
LTS' - - Details: 1/2/3";

$line =~ m/\[(.+)\]/;
my $stime = $1;

print "$stime\n";

If you have multiple instances of [stuff] on any given line or stretching across lines, things get uglier. The parentheses () put the captured items into numbered scalars ($1, $2, etc.) for use later. Depending on how reliable your output is, it probably pays to check for the existence of $1 before you try to use it.

Code:

my $stime = $1 if $1;

FuzzieDice · 01-22-2009, 11:56 AM

Thanks! This works.