Gossamer Forum
Home : General : Perl Programming :

Put 1/2 of the string to another variable

Quote Reply
Put 1/2 of the string to another variable
Let's say i got $url = "image1/pic1.jpg", how can I put the first 5 character to another variable like $newurl?..
Quote Reply
Re: Put 1/2 of the string to another variable In reply to
Hmm, how about:

$url = "image1/pic1.jpg";
$newurl = substr ($url, 0, 5);
print $newurl;

will print out "image".

Cheers,

Alex
Quote Reply
Re: Put 1/2 of the string to another variable In reply to
ok thanks alex, that's what I need. I'm familiar with C and VB but new to PERL. So let's make this clear.
substr(variable, starting char, length)
ins't it?
Quote Reply
Re: Put 1/2 of the string to another variable In reply to
Yes, but more then that is possible as well -- from the perl man pages:

Quote:
substr EXPR,OFFSET,LEN,REPLACEMENT
substr EXPR,OFFSET,LEN
substr EXPR,OFFSET

Extracts a substring out of EXPR and returns it. First character is at offset , or whatever you've set $[ to (but don't do that). If OFFSET is negative (or more precisely, less than $[), starts that far from the end of the string. If LEN is omitted, returns everything to the end of the string. If LEN is negative, leaves that many characters off the end of the string.

If you specify a substring that is partly outside the string, the part within the string is returned. If the substring is totally outside the string a warning is produced.

You can use the substr() function as an lvalue, in which case EXPR must be an lvalue. If you assign something shorter than LEN, the string will shrink, and if you assign something longer than LEN, the string will grow to accommodate it. To keep the string the same length you may need to pad or chop your value using sprintf().

An alternative to using substr() as an lvalue is to specify the replacement string as the 4th argument.
This allows you to replace parts of the EXPR and return what was there before in one operation.

Also, if you want to match a pattern rather then a fixed x characters, use regular expressions instead.

Hope that helps,

Alex