yet another regex question

$_ = "something";
$' =~ /some/;

this will give me thing for $'
however, how can I do this without using special variables?

First of all, "$' =~ /some/;" wont give you anything. That's just a matching syntax... typically used in an if statement. $_=~s/some//; would give you $_="thing";

2nd of all, you can set $_ = to anything you want. Example:

$_="something";
$var=$_;
$var=~s/some//;
print "$var";

This would print "thing".

3rd, and more important, you only have to use "special" variables when the information is pass from one sub routine to another, or another action that required passing variables on:

&print('asdf');

sub print {
$var=$_[0];
print "$var";
}#end sub

would print "asdf";

when reading a file $_ is used for each line (I assume you knew that since that's the variable you used).

actually i am trying to steer clear of the special variables (ie $_). My goal was to find a way not to use them.

Then when you read a file, do it like this:

###################
open(FILE, file.txt);
@file=<FILE>;
close(FILE);
###################

now @file contains the content of file.txt... each element of the array is one line of the file:

file.txt:
---
line 1
line 2
---

$file[0] now equads "line 1", $line[1] now equals "line 2".

[This message has been edited by JonLed (edited August 05, 2000).]

well, I am not trying to read input. maybe we don't understand eachother. All I wanted was to figure out a regular expression.

ie.
$word = "something";

(regex here)
(result:
$split = "some"
)

$word = "something";
$split = substr($word,0,4);
print "$splitn";

No regex here at all.

freebsd...you have solved my woes once again. Thanks!

Bah, that only works for that example exactly. If had something other than "something", you would get random returns.

You need to use regular expressions... what's wrong with them?

if you want to keep the regex approach alive.....

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana,Arial,Helvetica">code:</font><HR><pre># reading from a handle
open (HANDLE,"somefile");
# instead of while (<HANDLE> ), do
while ($line = <HANDLE> )
{
# now work with $line
$match = 'some';
$line =~ /(.*)$match(.*)/gi;
$before = $1; # catch contents of first ()
$after = $2; # catch contents of 2nd ()
# do stuff with before or after or match
}
close HANDLE;
[/code]


'hope this helps...