Matching a Word Exactly

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

Hi Fellows, I was wondering how I can match the word Guinea and not other country names such as Equatorial Guinea, etc.

use strict;
use warnings;

while (<DATA>) {
    




if ($_ =~ m/\bGuinea\b/) {

print "We have a match\n";

# m/\bGuinea\b$/ matches Guinea at end 
#m/^\bGuinea\b$/ matches Guinea at the beginning

}

else {
    
    
    print "We do not have a match\n";
}

}




__DATA__
Papua New Guinea
I live in Guinea
Guinea Bissau
Equatorial Guinea
[download]

Comment on Matching a Word Exactly Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Matching a Word Exactly by karlgoethebier (Abbot) on Oct 09, 2014 at 11:30 UTC
BTW, proper indention and omitting unnecessary whitespace isn't a bad thing :-) Read more... (593 Bytes) See also Perltidy. Best regards, Karl ŤThe Crux of the Biscuit is the Apostropheť	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Matching Exact Word by Anonymous Monk on Oct 09, 2014 at 09:16 UTC
Well, add stuff to match to the regex besides word boundaries ... see perlintro#More complex regular expressions , perlrequick (hint its anchors)	[reply]
Re^2: Matching Exact Word by Anonymous Monk on Oct 09, 2014 at 09:20 UTC
sleepy i guess :) not anchors, but match an optional word before Guinea, then check `my( $word, $guinea ) = /(\w+)?\s*\b(Guinea)\b/; if( $word eq ucfirst $word ){ warn "Not the Guinea I want ($word $guinea)"; }` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Matching Exact Word by jonadab (Parson) on Oct 09, 2014 at 11:01 UTC
This will fail in some cases. Geographically, Guinea is thousands of miles from here. (This fails immediately because of the comma; if the comma were removed, it would still fail.) If what you want is to match Guinea but not New Guinea or Equatorial Guinea, then what you probably really want is a negative lookbehind assertion that specifically rules out being preceded by "New " or "Equatorial ". Similarly, a negative lookahead assertion at the end can preclude Guinea Pig and Guinnea-Bisseau.	[reply]
Re^2: Matching Exact Word by Jim (Curate) on Oct 09, 2014 at 18:33 UTC
Re^2: Matching Exact Word by kzwix (Sexton) on Oct 09, 2014 at 11:20 UTC


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