or try $dir = "x:\\share1\\share2";

if (-d $dir);
{
print $dir," exists\n";
}
else
{
print $dir," not found\n";
}

i kind of disagree.... i think that perl has a pretty easy learning curve, at least for the basic stuff like console applications and web scripts.

yeah, the more complex things gets difficult,...

Dear Achmat

sorry for crapping in your thread. since it was over a month old when i first saw it, i figured you were long gone. if you're still around, let me know and i'll try to help you with...

yeah, actually, it is pretty doggone clean code, esp. for Perl... I dont remember it being like that. did it get cleaned up? guess not, i dont see evidence of an edit...

Really, I did read...

i guess i wasnt thinking of the people like you who answer questions...

i was thinking of the hordes of people who pop in and say "ne1 plz to do 4 me the homeworks ok thx u"


.

nice summary.

but are you trying to drum up business for your website? you wont find it here.

all you'll find here are students from second-world countries trying to plagiarize their way...

that's what i gave him, at least the interesting bits. my example "$word" can be any string. i did not spend time on how he gets input into the variable.



well, i don't find that to be...

i already gave you the answer. i'll repost it using your variable names:


# variable "$word" is set by user search request
# variable "$sentence" has text to be searched

$word = "rna binding...

i would personally do something like this:

$match = "rna binding protein"

@matchwords = split(/[ -]/,$match);

$newmatch = join("[ -]",@matchwords);

if ($_ =~ /$newmatch/i ) {

"perltoot"

the answer is "yes"

next, please.

i thought this thread was about "strangling newbies"

imagine my dismay when i found a ten-mile long post full of incoherent code with no syntax coloring.

ah, that would explain the lag.

which forum is that?

you posted this question twice dave.

does your program not work?

what is your question?

well, does your code work like you expect it to?

um, send a wireless command to a robot who is standing by a switch?

sounds like the bestest way to handle this is not to use a DIFF style comparison function, but merely to parse each file looking for the parameter in question.

find the parameter, extract its...

^ yeap... i agree pretty much with everything you said there. (except i think perl is pretty easy for beginners to get started, at least for the basics...)

and FORTRAN is dead. but it also...

well, it is good for that sort of work.

it's also my preferred tool, if only because (1) i already know the language and am familiar with it (2) it's just so easy to get something slapped together...

aha

you just signed up to this site in order to post that

religious discussions, indeed :P

well, yeah, i get your point, but ...

Fortran programs are still out there chugging away, but that doesn't mean Fortran isn't dead, or that it would be worthwhile for the average person to bother...

CORRECTION:

perl 5.10 has been out for a while.

but still. version 5 was released in 1994.

theyve been talkign about releasing version 6 "any day now" for the past 8 years.

so... whatchyallthink?

i notice that this forum gets a tiny burst of activity about once a week. before posting this thread, the last couple posts here were made 9 days ago. then the next few...

Hi Ray

lets do this in a new thread, if you dont mind.

start a new thread and describe what you're trying to do and your attempt so far to do it.

you can post the link to the new thread in...

glad you got it figured out :)

for Perl in Windows, i highly recommend that you use ActiveState Perl. It's the industry standard, and has a ton of modules and great community support.
...

you could consider using

\W+

instead of

\/ and \:

\W+ is any amount of non-alphanumerics. as opposed to \w+ which is any amount of alphanumerics (ie, 'A-Z' plus 'a-z' plus '0-9' plus...

Bio Perl...

that looks like some pretty cool stuff

now i have a new diversion to poke around in :)

heres some more hints:

(1) do not attempt to look for "return" statements. at all.

(2) only use the open/close brace counting method.

(3) you need to change your regex method. merely...

(1) do not just blindly replace = with == , there was only one place where this was an issue

if($openCount==$closeCount)

(2) SOME functions can have NO "return" statements (void) ... but ANY...

in case it's not clear...

your parsing method will count the opening brace in line 6, but not the closing brace in line 10

1) i noticed in your earlier code you were using = when you should have been using ==

2) you also had a do statement without a corresponding while condition. avoid do/while's for this and other...

for one thing, you cant put the begin/end of line operators (^ and $) inside parentheses. they must be immediately adjacent to the match operator like this

/^ ...regex... $/

for another...

it isn't "necessarily" always at the first spot.

but the regex should be correct.

post more code. use [code=c] tags, please

whoa, for a sec i thought you were pointing us to the goatse dude

:O

awesome.

now we might get this to four pages!

:-D

that sounds a bit ambiguous.

if you're doing a username, convention is to allow letters, numbers, and underscores only ... and to insist on a letter only for the first position

in regex, the...

use some parentheses


.

page three!

lol.

i think Kevin's is the best solution. mine works, but is ugly.

um... i don't know?

it's clearly more elegant than mine.

and doesn't pedantically force him to accept my idea of underscores.

i think yours is the winner

okay, bradleykirby, i see the problem.

you did not put the carat ^ at the beginning, where it should be.