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Hi perlmonks I really need help concerning the regex. I have a program that open a file input and create a file output. The input and output file looks like this :

INPUT

DATE     13-JUN-2000
COMMERCIAL SUPPLIERS
SEQUENCE             
                     /exon="49-333"
                     /intron="1-48;334-385"
                     
//
DATE     13-JUN-2000
COMMERCIAL SUPPLIERS
SEQUENCE            
                     /exon=""
                     /intron="1-29"
//

OUTPUT                    
DBACC   D000001
DATE     "13-JUN 2002"
Exon    {Translation%49-133}
Intron    {Translation%1-48}
Intron    (Translation%334-385}

DBACC   D000002
DATE    "13-JUN 2002"
Exon    {Translation -}
Intron    {Translation%1-29}
[download]

I have some problem with the printing of exon and intron. There can be 0 or more element separate by ; in it.I know that if there are 0 or more element in regex we use *.But in this case I'm quite confused with the way to print all the $1,$2 elements.

My code partly looks like:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
# A program that accept an input file: Scorpion database from Gen Bank
# and will output the database in BioWare format

my $file1="$ARGV[0]";          #var to save the input database
my $result=">".$ARGV[1];
my $counter=1;
my $no='D000001';

open(INFO1,$file1) or die "Can't open $file1.\n";   #open file1
open(OUT,$result) or die "Can't open $result.\n";

#foreach line in the files
foreach(<INFO1>)
{
    if(/^DATE\s*(.*)-(.*)-(.*)/){
        print OUT "DBACC\t $no\n";
        print OUT "Date\t $1-$2-$3\n";
        $no++;
        }
    elsif(/\s*\/exon="(\d*-\d*)*"\n/){
        print OUT "Exon\t \{Translation\%$1\}\n";
        }
    elsif(/\s*\/intron="(\d*-\d*)*"\n/){
        print OUT "Intron\t \{Translation\%$1\}\n";
        }    
    else{
    print OUT "line $counter\n";
    }
    $counter++;
}
close(INFO1);
close(OUT);
[download]

Actually does " is considered a metacharacter? I mean if we want to search a { in a string we must use \{ if we want to search for " do I have to put \" since it always give me some error.

Thanks so much...

In reply to about regular expression by agustina_s

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