pattern match of first occurance

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

Hi All,
I want to find the first occurance of pattern matching for "year". How can i do that?

$var='<x><year>2010<day>5</day></year><month>January</month> <day>31</
+day>, <year>2010</year></x>';
$var=~/<year>(.+)<\/year>/;
print $1;
[download]

from the above coding i am getting the result
2010<day>5</day></year><month>January</month> <day>31</day>, <year>2010 but i need the below output.
2010<day>5</day>

Comment on pattern match of first occurance Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: pattern match of first occurance by johngg (Canon) on Jul 08, 2010 at 10:41 UTC
Your match `(.+)` is greedy so it will match as much as possible, i.e. up to the second `</year>`. Make it non-greedy with the addition of a question mark. `$ perl -E ' > $var = q{<x><year>2010<day>5</day></year><month>January</month> <day +>31</day>, <year>2010</year></x>}; > say $1 if $var =~m{<year>(.+?)</year>};' 2010<day>5</day> $` [download] I hope this is helpful. Cheers, JohnGG	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: pattern match of first occurance by rdfield (Priest) on Jul 08, 2010 at 13:57 UTC
Or match only digits: `say $1 if $var =~m{<year>(\d+)</year>};` [download] rdfield	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: pattern match of first occurance by deMize (Monk) on Jul 08, 2010 at 20:47 UTC
Comment: Nope he said he's trying to get: 2010<day>5</day> Demize	[reply]
Re^4: pattern match of first occurance by rdfield (Priest) on Jul 15, 2010 at 15:06 UTC
Re: pattern match of first occurance by Anonymous Monk on Jul 08, 2010 at 10:36 UTC
Use a parser `$var='<x><year>2010<day>5</day></year><month>January</month> <day>31</ +day>, <year>2010</year></x>'; use Data::Dumper; use XML::Simple; die Dumper( XMLin( $var ) ); __END__ $VAR1 = { 'month' => 'January', 'content' => ', ', 'day' => '31', 'year' => [ { 'day' => '5', 'content' => '2010' }, '2010' ] };` [download]	[reply] [d/l]


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