Perl: quick replacing of occurrences of multiple words in an array

Question

Sorry if it is a duplicate topic, but I've searched inside the forum and I've only found similar but not identical questions.

My problem is:

I've got an array of strings like this one:

@array = ("My name is "Annie" \n", "My mother's name was "Annie", too. \n", "I am "27" years old \n", "I live in "Minnesota" \n");

And another array of strings like this one:

@subs = ("Annie", "22", "Minnesota");

I would like to:

1) find any occurrence of the words from the second array in the first array (for instance: Annie would match with the first and the second element, Minnesota only with the last one).

2) substitute all the words which matched with any element of the second array with the same word followed by "-DATA" (for instance: "My name is "Annie-DATA"\n").

I guess that this could be easily done with one or two for loops, but I'm wondering if there's any quicker way, maybe with some smart use of PERL's regexs.

Thank you!

The real problem should not be adding -DATA or is it? There could be a better way to look at the problem. — aartist
– aartist, Commented Apr 4, 2013 at 12:57
What do you mean? Maybe I should specify that the real i/o of my program is much more complicated than this example I posted. However, I also have the feeling that I may be facing the problem the wrong way because this part of my algorithm (not shown here) feels a bit muddled, so you could be right. — selenocysteine
– selenocysteine, Commented Apr 4, 2013 at 13:07

alestanis · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-04 12:47:29Z

2

You could replace like this:

s/(Annie|22|Minnesota)/\1-DATA/g

answered Apr 4, 2013 at 12:47

alestanis

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2 Comments

selenocysteine Over a year ago

Thank you! Only a question: but what if I don't know in advance the 3 key words I've to match (in this case, Annie, 22, Minnesota), but they come from an array which can change both in length and content?

aartist Over a year ago

$sub = join '|', @sub; s/($sub)/\1-DATA/g;

imran · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-04 13:07:27Z

2

One solution:

use strict;
use warnings;
my @array = ("My name is \"Annie\" \n",
   "My mother's name was \"Annie\", too. \n",
   "I am \"27\" years old \n",
   "I live in \"Minnesota\" \n");
my @subs = ("Annie", "22", "Minnesota");

my @new_array = map { my $line = $_; 
                      $line =~ s/$_/$_-DATA/g foreach @subs; 
                      $line } @array;

answered Apr 4, 2013 at 13:07

imran

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Comments

Qtax · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-04 13:35:05Z

1

Another solution which also escapes meta chars:

# escape possible meta characters and join
my $sub = join '|', map { quotemeta } @subs;

# replace in the array
s/($sub)/$1-DATA/g for @array;

If you don't want to change the values directly in @array use map instead of for. Eg: my @new = map s/($sub)/$1-DATA/g, @array;

answered Apr 4, 2013 at 13:35

Qtax

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