I want to split up an ASCII text document into words (as recognized by
/b{wb}), strings of the non-word characters between words, and strings of newlines.
The following code almost works, but instead of treating the newlines as separate tokens, it leaves them appended to the preceding word
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;
my $book = do {local $/; <DATA>}; # slurp the book
# Split book into words (delimited by \b{wb}), sequences of newlines,
# and sequences of anything else.
while ($book =~
/(
( \W+ )
|
( \b{wb}.+?\b{wb} )
|
( \n+ )
)
/xg) {
show($1);
}
print "\n";
# show(): make spaces and newlines visible
sub show {
my $str = shift;
$str =~ tr/\n/$/;
$str =~ tr/ /_/;
print "{$str}\n";
}
__DATA__
--First paragraph--
Second one's followed by only one newline. "Hello," she said, "How's t
+ricks?"
Third paragraph doesn't end with any punctuation ... and the splitting
+ works
4th one is separated by two newlines.
The End.
The output is:
{--}
{First}
{_}
{paragraph}
{--$} <- The newline ('$') should be separate group
{Second}
{_}
{one's}
{_}
{followed}
{_}
{by}
{_}
{only}
{_}
{one}
{_}
{newline}
{._"}
{Hello}
{,"_}
{she}
{_}
{said}
{,_"}
{How's}
{_}
{tricks}
{?"$$} <- the two newlines should be a separate group
{Third}
{_}
{paragraph}
{_}
{doesn't}
{_}
{end}
{_}
{with}
{_}
{any}
{_}
{punctuation}
{_..._}
{and}
{_}
{the}
{_}
{splitting}
{_}
{works} <- Correctly
{$$} <- split
{4th}
{_}
{one}
{_}
{is}
{_}
{separated}
{_}
{by}
{_}
{two}
{_}
{newlines}
{.$$_________} <- should be three separate groups
{The}
{_}
{End}
{.$}
I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong, and whether there's a better solution. (Would the split function be preferable?)
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