Perl - Regex substitution does not work

Question

My regex is supposed to substitute a date in a larger csv file with the word 'TIMESTAMP'.

Example data

TEXT12, TEXT312, 22.11.2013 13:30:16, abcd,

Code

while(<>) {                                                           
  s/[0-9]{2}.[0-9]{2}.[0-9]{4}\s[0-9]{2}:[0-9]{2}:[0-9]{2}/TIMESTAMP/;
  print $_;                                                           
}

I checked the regex with RegexBuddy, it matches there successfully, but in the Perl program it doesn't work. Tried with Perl 5.14 and Perl 5.18 on Linux and Windows, no success.

Where is the mistake?!

Filippo Lauria · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-03 13:20:05Z

1

You have to escape dots ..

Try this one:

s/[0-9]{2}\.[0-9]{2}\.[0-9]{4}\s[0-9]{2}:[0-9]{2}:[0-9]{2}/TIMESTAMP/;

answered Mar 3, 2014 at 13:20

Filippo Lauria

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1 Comment

mpapec Over a year ago

@royskatt in your case . and \. both match dot char.

mpapec · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-03 13:22:25Z

1

Answer is in your csv file, you might have several white spaces between numbers so use \s+

s/[0-9]{2}\.[0-9]{2}\.[0-9]{4}\s+[0-9]{2}:[0-9]{2}:[0-9]{2}/TIMESTAMP/;

Also, when you want to match literal . char you have to escape it \. or use regex class for it [.]

answered Mar 3, 2014 at 13:22

mpapec

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