pattern matching question

[loosecannon1]

I'm trying to get "admin" out of the following:

$env_var = "iw_role=admin; iw_user=2z60z1;";
$env_var =~ m/iw_role=(.*);.*/;
print $1;


Problem is the string "admin; iw_user=2z60z1" is stored in $1 not "admin". But if I take the second semicolon off like: $env_var = "iw_role=admin; iw_user=2z60z1";
it works.

Can anyone explain why this is happening?

 

[justice41]

The reason for this is explained pretty well in the perlretut (perl regex tutorial) perldoc.

http://www.perldoc.com/perl5.8.0/pod/perlretut.html#Matching-repetitions

Note particularly the part about maximal-matching or greedy quantifiers, especially 'Principle 2'.

jaa

 

[loosecannon1]

Thanks jaa, great link!

This works:
$env_var =~ m/iw_role=(.*?);/;