How to match string that contain exact 3 time occurrence of special character in perl

Question

I have try few method to match a word that contain exact 3 times slash but cannot work. Below are the example

@array = qw( abc/ab1/abc/abc a2/b1/c3/d4/ee w/5         


        

Answer 1

The pattern you need (with whitespace added) is

^ [^/]* / [^/]* / [^/]* / [^/]* \z

or

^ [^/]* (?: / [^/]* ){3} \z

Your second attempt was close, but using ^ without \z made it so you checked for string starting with your pattern.

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Solutions:

say for grep { m{^ [^/]* (?: / [^/]* ){3} \z}x } @array;

or

say for grep { ( () = m{/}g ) == 3 } @array;

or

say for grep { tr{/}{} == 3 } @array;

Answer 2

Match globally and compare the number of matches with 3

if ( ( () = m{/}g ) == 3 ) { say "Matched 3 times" }

where the =()= operator is a play on context, forcing list context on its right side but returning the number of elements of that list when scalar context is provided on its left side.

If you are uncomfortable with such a syntax stretch then assign to an array

if ( ( my @m = m{/}g ) == 3 ) { say "Matched 3 times" }

where the subsequent comparison evaluates it in the scalar context.

You are trying to match three consecutive / and your string doesn't have that.

Answer 3

You need to match

• a slash
• surrounded by some non-slashes (^(?:[^\/]*)
• repeating the match exactly three times
• and enclosing the whole triple in start of line and and of line anchors:

$string =~ /^(?:[^\/]*\/[^\/]*){3}$/;

Answer 4

if ( $string =~ /\/.*\/.*\// and $string !~ /\/.*\/.*\/.*\// )