SPUG: Odd characters in string
John W. Krahn
krahnj at telus.net
Thu Jan 25 15:32:08 PST 2007
Eric.D.Peterson at alltel.com wrote:
> How can I count the number of odd (non-alphanumeric, on control)
> characters in a string?
>
> For example: a string "aAA$%\/1
> 50" has 3 numeric, 3 alphabetic, 1 (or 2) control/whitespace (\n or two
> \r\n) and 4 odd characters. I thought maybe a RegEx but I keep getting
> lost with the character escaping.
Perhaps you meant the string:
"aAA\$%\1
50"
instead. The variable $% interpolates in a double quoted string and "\/"
interpolates as "/".
$ perl -le'
my $str = "aAA\$%\1
50";
print for $str =~ s/([[:digit:]])/$1/g,
$str =~ s/([[:alpha:]])/$1/g,
$str =~ s/([[:cntrl:]])/$1/g,
$str =~ s/([[:punct:]])/$1/g;
'
2
3
2
2
The substitution operator returns the number of characters that were
substituted and the POSIX character classes (should) work with any non-ASCII
character sets.
John
--
Perl isn't a toolbox, but a small machine shop where you can special-order
certain sorts of tools at low cost and in short order. -- Larry Wall
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