split this

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

Dear brethren,

here is my problem. I have a string, say 'E/stYna~ko/', and I want to split it into single letters, except '/' and '~' should be grouped with the preceding letter (they never appear at the beginning of the string) I.e. the desired output in the above case is 'E/ s t Y n a~ k o/'. Sounds like a job for split, right? Only that I can't get it to work properly. Here's what I have tried so far:

$x = 'E/stYna~ko';
print join (' ', split /(\w[^\/~])/, $x); #->E/ st  Yn a~ ko /
print join (' ', split /(\w(?!\/~))/, $x); #-> E / s  t  Y  n  a ~ k  
+o
print join (' ', split /([^\/~])/, $x); #-> E / s  t  Y  n  a ~ k  o
print join (' ', split /(?!\/~)/, $x); #->E / s t Y n a ~ k o
[download]

Yes, I know I could first split into individual characters and then go through the array and join the '/' and '~' with the preceding characters, but can't split give me the correct solution right away?

Puzzled, pike

Comment on split this Select or Download Code

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Re: split this by davorg (Chancellor) on Nov 06, 2001 at 17:52 UTC
Actually, it doesn't sound like a job for `split`. It sounds like a job for a regular expression. Try this: `my $x = 'E/stYna~ko'; my @chars = $x =~ /(\w\W)/g; print "@chars\n";` [download] -- <http://www.dave.org.uk> "The first rule of Perl club is you don't talk about Perl club."*	[reply] [d/l]
(tye)Re: split this by tye (Sage) on Nov 07, 2001 at 04:04 UTC
`split /(?=\w)/` also works. - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: split this by dmmiller2k (Chaplain) on Nov 06, 2001 at 23:10 UTC
Bravo! Succinct, concise, nothing unnecessary. Well done. dmm You can give a man a fish and feed him for a day ... Or, you can teach him to fish and feed him for a lifetime	[reply]
Re: split this by Tyke (Pilgrim) on Nov 06, 2001 at 18:02 UTC
I think that you _can_ do it with a split: `perl -le "print for split /(?=[^~\/](?:.\|$))/,shift" "E/sYna~ko/"` [download] looks as if it works on your test data. Update Actually that should have been `perl -le "print for split /(?=[^~\/])/,shift" "E/sYna~ko/"` [download] but you saw that	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: split this by Elliott (Pilgrim) on Nov 06, 2001 at 17:54 UTC
The following groups them correctly but is still inserting extra blanks. `$x = 'E/stYna~ko'; @j=split (/(\w\W*)/, $x); foreach $j(@j){ $i++; print "$i - $j\n"; } print "\n";` [download] (I added the extra code for clarity of output. It was hard to see where the exrta blanks were otherwise.)	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: split this by pike (Monk) on Nov 06, 2001 at 18:04 UTC
Almost what I was looking for. I just have to grep out the empty fields: `print join(':', grep /\S/, split /(\w\W?)/,$x); #->E/:s:t:Y:n:a~:k:o` [download] And yes, using blanks as delimiters in the print was a bad idea -> changed to colons. Thanks, pike	[reply] [d/l]
more concise by Fletch (Bishop) on Nov 06, 2001 at 18:06 UTC
`print "'", join( "', '", @j ), "'\n";` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: even more concise by davorg (Chancellor) on Nov 06, 2001 at 18:13 UTC
`{ local $" = "', '"; print "'@j'\n"; }` [download] perlvar is your friend :) Update: Well, OK. Maybe not more concise then. But, maybe easier to follow? I think we need a shorter alias for `local`. -- <http://www.dave.org.uk> "The first rule of Perl club is you don't talk about Perl club."	[reply] [d/l]
wc and I would call it a tie :) by Fletch (Bishop) on Nov 06, 2001 at 18:31 UTC
Re: split this by BrentDax (Hermit) on Nov 07, 2001 at 00:02 UTC
`C:\WINDOWS\Desktop>perl -e "print join ' ', split /(?!\W)/, 'E/sYna~ko +/'" E/ s Y n a~ k o/` [download] Your example like this forgot to use a character class--it tried to match a slash followed by a tilde. =cut --Brent Dax There is no sig.	[reply] [d/l]


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