http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=630124

nimdokk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I am building a tool to take some user input and then automatically set up directories and other tasks based on the user input. I'm trying to make sure that the input is something that can be used. I want to make sure the input matches all alphanumeric (no problem), the underscore character (no problem), and the dash "-". If I use the \W+ regex, it works fine except on the dash. I need to expand the regex somehow, but I am at a loss right now on how to do this. Below is the snippet I've been working on:

use strict; use warnings; foreach my $dir (<DATA>) { chomp $dir; print "DIR: $dir\n"; if ( $dir =~ /\W+/ ) { print "\t$dir is not clean.\n"; } else { print "\t$dir is clean.\n"; }#close if }#close foreach __DATA__ test 1234 test_1234 test-1234 test 1234 test?1234 test+1234 test.1234

The first four items should return as "Clean" while the last four should return as "Not Clean". I've tried reversing to match Word (\w+) but because there are valid characters in all the items, they all return as "Clean". Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.