regular expression matching

[Tkil]

>>>>> "Jason" == Jason White <jasona at inetarena.com> writes:

Jason> How exactly do I use a regular expression as a boolean value?

You just evaluate it in a boolean context.  But that's probably not
what you meant.

Jason> $service="cns-noc_server1";
Jason> $rule="cns-noc";

Jason> if( WHAT DO I PUT HERE ) {
Jason>     print "$rule is in $service \n";
Jason> } else {
Jason>     print "$rule isn't in $service \n";
Jason> }

The answer depends on what you man by "in", when you say that "$rule
is in $service".

If you mean substring inclusion ("is $rule a substring of $service?"),
then you want "index".  man perlfunc.

If you mean to interpret the contents of $rule as a regular
expression, and see if that regular expression matches something in
$service, then you want the bind operator "=~" and m// (or just //),
possibly also involving \Q (as Tom P. points out in a later post) or
qr//.  All of this is covered in perlop and perlre.

The best way to do either of these depends a fair bit on how many
rules you plan on matching against how many services.

t.
TIMTOWTDI