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RegEx: Why is [.] not a valid character class?by hoppfrosch (Scribe) |
on Nov 17, 2004 at 14:41 UTC ( [id://408422]=perlquestion: print w/replies, xml ) | Need Help?? |
hoppfrosch has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:
Hi, my problem: I've got a single string, containing the contents of a complete HTML-File (including CarriageReturns). This string contains several <table>...<\table> parts (with a lot of linebreaks in the ... part). What I want to do is to get the first table from the string. What I tried: Further investigation shows, that [.] is not a valid character class ... My questions are: Why is '.' not allowed within a character class? It's clear to me now that my desired character class [.\n] can be achieved with the s modifier - but why is there such an "inconsistent way" using a modifier to emulate a character class? Why is there no "super" character class - matching ALL characters including '\n'? What's the reason excluding '\n' from '.'? (Why is '\n' handled in a special way?) Hoppfrosch Edit by castaway - use html entities instead of angled brackets
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