Regex style and efficiency

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

I have a string that begins with a variable sequence of characters, which is followed by a constant string that can be used as a unique anchor. I want to strip off the variable stuff at the beginning so that it begins with the anchor. For example, given this:

my $s = 'variable chars anchor want this';
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I want to end with this:

$s = 'anchor want this';
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I can think of several ways to approach this, but I do not know which might be considered better than others from the standpoint of style or efficiency (not just benchmarking, but also including potential for backtracking). These approaches include:

Capture the wanted portion

if( $s =~ m/^.*?(anchor.*)$/ ){ $s = $1; }
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Capture and strip the variable portion

if( $s =~ m/^(.*?)anchor/ ){ my $bad = $1; $s =~ s/$bad//; }
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$s =~ s/^.*?anchor/anchor/;
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Silly constructs

e.g., loops that utilize reverse, chop, split, ...
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All of these employ .* (except for the silly constructs, which are left as an exercise for the reader), but I am trying to avoid that idiom by thinking more carefully about my regexen (Death to Dot Star!). I suspect a better regex might be something like a negated character class, but for a group: "match everything from the start of the string that does not match the sequence of characters anchor".

How would you do this, and why?

Comment on Regex style and efficiency Select or Download Code

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Re: Regex style and efficiency by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Jan 10, 2010 at 22:13 UTC
Because it is simple and efficient: `$s = 'variable chars anchor want this';; $s = substr $s, index $s,'anchor';; print $s;; anchor want this` [download] If I was going to use a regex (say the anchor had a variable component), then: `$s = 'variable chars anchor want this';; $s =~ s[.+(?=anchor)][];; print $s;; anchor want this` [download] The difference: `cmpthese -1,{ a=> q[$s='variable chars anchor want this';$s=~s[.+(?=anchor)][];] +, b=> q[$s='variable chars anchor want this';$s=substr $s, index $s, +'anchor';] };; Rate a b a 1592446/s -- -48% b 3055291/s 92% --` [download] Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error. "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority". In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice. "I'd rather go naked than blow up my ass"	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Regex style and efficiency by bobf (Monsignor) on Jan 10, 2010 at 22:23 UTC
Nice. It didn't even occur to me to use substr/index for this. I also like how you used the non-capturing look-ahead to prevent the desired text from being included in the `s///`. Thanks!	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Regex style and efficiency by ikegami (Patriarch) on Jan 11, 2010 at 01:04 UTC
As is, the substr/index version assumes the anchor is present. That may or may not be a problem.	[reply]
Re: Regex style and efficiency by JavaFan (Canon) on Jan 11, 2010 at 10:02 UTC
Here's one that doesn't use `.*`: `$s =~ /anchor/p and $s = ${^MATCH} . ${^POSTMATCH};` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]


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