use File::Basename;
$s = '/home/monks/thanksforhelping1234567890.ext';
print dirname $s;
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my $root = "/home/monks/thanksforhelping";
my $ext = ".ext";

$string =~ /($root \d+ $ext)/x;
my $filename = $1;
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Well, a quick solution to this could be

However there are some points that I would like to make:

• This will work only if the scalar contains the path you are searching
• If there are two or more paths like this i a scalar, this will match only the first one
• I am not an expert in regexp either, so always take my advice with a grain of salt ;)

This is what I thought it should look like. Unfortunately, when I tested it, I also got stuff that was on the same line as the path I wanted, but was not part of the path itself. For instance, I got:

but you might try looking at /home/monks/thanksforhelping1234567890.ext for help

Any suggestions on how to get rid of the excess stuff?

I don't really know what is happening at your end, but this seems

$_ = "but you might try looking at /home/monks/thanksforhelping1234567
+890.ext for help";
$_ =~ /(\/home\/monks\/thanksforhelping\d+\.ext)/;
print $1;
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to output:

/home/monks/thanksforhelping1234567890.ext
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So check for typos... that could be your problem

for($scalar){
/((?:\/\w+)+\/file\d+.ext)/;
$pathtofile=$1;
}
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I would do it using File::Basename to separate the path from the filename. This simplifies the task a little: you just have to extract the number from the filename:


#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use File::Basename;

while (<>) {
        my ($name, $path, $suffix) = fileparse ($_, ".txt");
        $name =~ /\D+(\d+)/;
        print "number: $1\n";
}
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I hope this helps.

marcos

If you know the absolute filename and want to open that file, what prevents you from doing just that?

_Ass_uming safe input data here:

my $filename = $ARGV[0] or die "No filename given\n";
open INPUT, "<", $filename or die "could not open $filename\n";
while (<INPUT>) { print $_ };
close INPUT;
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Anyway:
If the complete filename is in $filename you can do:


my ($file_without_path) = $filename =~ /^.*?\/(\w*?\w*?\.ext)$/;
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and end up with something like: "file23432545335.ext"

Still, I don't see the point if you trust the filename as being safe, and just want to open it. (Since you will need the path anyway).

janx

$path =~ m/thanksforhelping([^.]+)\.ext/;
$whatyouwant = $1;
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