I'm not all that sure how this works/what it means...
my ($value) = ($out =~ /currentvalue[^>]*>([^<]+)/);
So basically, thats part of a CURL/PERL script, it goes onto www.example.com, and finds <span id="currentvalue"> GETS THIS VALUE </span>
in the pages html.
What exactly does the [^>]*>([^<]+)/) part of the script do? Does it define that its looking for span id=".." ?
Where can I learn more about the [^>]*>([^<]+)/) functions?
/.../ aka m/.../ is a the match operator. It checks if its operand (on the LHS of =~) matches the regular expression within the literal. Operators are documented in perlop. (Go down to "m/PATTERN/".) Regular expressions are documented in perlre.
As for the regular expression used here,
$ perl -MYAPE::Regex::Explain \
-e'print YAPE::Regex::Explain->new($ARGV[0])->explain' \
'currentvalue[^>]*>([^<]+)'
The regular expression:
(?-imsx:currentvalue[^>]*>([^<]+))
matches as follows:
NODE EXPLANATION
----------------------------------------------------------------------
(?-imsx: group, but do not capture (case-sensitive)
(with ^ and $ matching normally) (with . not
matching \n) (matching whitespace and #
normally):
----------------------------------------------------------------------
currentvalue 'currentvalue'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
[^>]* any character except: '>' (0 or more times
(matching the most amount possible))
----------------------------------------------------------------------
> '>'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
( group and capture to \1:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
[^<]+ any character except: '<' (1 or more
times (matching the most amount
possible))
----------------------------------------------------------------------
) end of \1
----------------------------------------------------------------------
) end of grouping
----------------------------------------------------------------------
This is plain vanilla Perl regexp. See this tutorial
/ # Start of regexp
currentvalue # Matches the string 'currentvalue'
[^>]* # Matches 0 or more characters which is not '>'
> # Matches >
( # Captures match enclosed in () to Perl built-in variable $1
[^<]+ # Matches 1 or more characters which is not '<'
) # End of group $1
/ # End of regexp