get perl to process backslash escapes in string - string

Consider this code:
my $str = '"line 1\n\t line 2"'; # from some JSON, or something
say $str; # print literal backslashes, not what I want
say eval $str; # processes backslashes, but overkill
Is there a reasonably easy way to get the effect of the last line, but without using full-blown eval? Even leaving aside the security implications (I mostly trust this string), this interpolates variables and stuff which I don't want. This can be worked around by an extra preprocessing step where I manually escape dollar signs and such, but this still feels a bit too hacky, even for my tastes.

#mob has the right recommendation. For the general problem:
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;
my %unescape = map +($_ => eval "qq{\\$_}"), qw(f n r t); # etc
my $special = join '|', keys %unescape;
my $str = '"line 1\n\t line 2"';
$str =~ s{ \\ ($special) }{$unescape{$1}}xg;
print "'$str\n'";

If it's JSON, then decode it with JSON.
use JSON;
my $str = '"line 1\n\t line 2"'; # from some JSON, or something
my $decoded = JSON::decode_json("[$str]");
say $decoded->[0];

Related

Perl Program to Print Unicode From Hex Value

I am starting up with Perl and confused on how to render unicode characters given a hex string variable.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
foreach my $i (0..10000) {
my $hex = sprintf("%X", $i);
print("unicode of $i is \x{$hex}\n");
}
print("\x{2620}\n");
print("\x{BEEF}\n");
Gives me the warning: Illegal hexadecimal digit '$' ignored at perl.pl line 9.
and no value prints for \x{$hex}
Both chr($num) and pack('W', $num) produce a string consisting of the single character with the specified value, just like "\x{XXXX}" does.
As such, you can use
print("unicode of $i is ".chr(hex($hex))."\n");
or just
print("unicode of $i is ".chr($i)."\n");
Note that your program makes no sense without
use open ':std', ':encoding(UTF-8)';
Yup. You can't do that. No variable interpolation allowed in the middle of a \x like that. You can use chr() to get that character though.
Randal's answer is correct. For more info, you might want to read perluniintro.
From there, you can find, for example:
At run-time you can use:
use charnames ();
my $hebrew_alef_from_name
= charnames::string_vianame("HEBREW LETTER ALEF");
my $hebrew_alef_from_code_point = charnames::string_vianame("U+05D0");

Perl Force Inteprolation of Literal String [duplicate]

In perl suppose I have a string like 'hello\tworld\n', and what I want is:
'hello world
'
That is, "hello", then a literal tab character, then "world", then a literal newline. Or equivalently, "hello\tworld\n" (note the double quotes).
In other words, is there a function for taking a string with escape sequences and returning an equivalent string with all the escape sequences interpolated? I don't want to interpolate variables or anything else, just escape sequences like \x, where x is a letter.
Sounds like a problem that someone else would have solved already. I've never used the module, but it looks useful:
use String::Escape qw(unbackslash);
my $s = unbackslash('hello\tworld\n');
You can do it with 'eval':
my $string = 'hello\tworld\n';
my $decoded_string = eval "\"$string\"";
Note that there are security issues tied to that approach if you don't have 100% control of the input string.
Edit: If you want to ONLY interpolate \x substitutions (and not the general case of 'anything Perl would interpolate in a quoted string') you could do this:
my $string = 'hello\tworld\n';
$string =~ s#([^\\A-Za-z_0-9])#\\$1#gs;
my $decoded_string = eval "\"$string\"";
That does almost the same thing as quotemeta - but exempts '\' characters from being escaped.
Edit2: This still isn't 100% safe because if the last character is a '\' - it will 'leak' past the end of the string though...
Personally, if I wanted to be 100% safe I would make a hash with the subs I specifically wanted and use a regex substitution instead of an eval:
my %sub_strings = (
'\n' => "\n",
'\t' => "\t",
'\r' => "\r",
);
$string =~ s/(\\n|\\t|\\n)/$sub_strings{$1}/gs;

How do I include new lines in a string in Perl?

I have a string that looks like this
Acanthocolla_cruciata,#8B5F65Acanthocyrta_haeckeli,#8B5F65Acanthometra_fusca,#8B5F65Acanthopeltis_japonica,#FFB5C5
I am trying to added in new lines so get in list format. Like this
Acanthocolla_cruciata,#8B5F65
Acanthocyrta_haeckeli,#8B5F65
Acanthometra_fusca,#8B5F65
Acanthopeltis_japonica,#FFB5C5
I have a perl script
use strict;
use warnings;
open my $new_tree_fh, '>', 'test_match.txt'
or die qq{Failed to open "update_color.txt" for output: $!\n};
open my $file, '<', $ARGV[0]
or die qq{Failed to open "$ARGV[0]" for input: $!\n};
while ( my $string = <$file> ) {
my $splitmessage = join ("\n", ($string =~ m/(.+)+\,+\#+\w{6}/gs));
print $new_tree_fh $splitmessage, "\n";
}
close $file;
close $new_tree_fh;
The pattern match works but it wont print the new line as I want to make the list. Can anyone please suggest anything.
I'd do:
my $str = 'Acanthocolla_cruciata,#8B5F65Acanthocyrta_haeckeli,#8B5F65Acanthometra_fusca,#8B5F65Acanthopeltis_japonica,#FFB5C5';
$str =~ s/(?<=,#\w{6})/\n/g;
say $str;
Output:
Acanthocolla_cruciata,#8B5F65
Acanthocyrta_haeckeli,#8B5F65
Acanthometra_fusca,#8B5F65
Acanthopeltis_japonica,#FFB5C5
OK, I think your problem here is that your regular expression doesn't match properly.
(.+)+
for example - probably doesn't do what you think it does. It's a greedy capture of 1 or more of "anything" which will grab your whole string.
Check it out on regex101.
Try:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
while ( my $string = <DATA> ) {
my $splitmessage = join( "\n", ( $string =~ m/(\w+,\#+\w{6})/g ) );
print $splitmessage, "\n";
}
__DATA__
Acanthocolla_cruciata,#8B5F65Acanthocyrta_haeckeli,#8B5F65Acanthometra_fusca,#8B5F65Acanthopeltis_japonica,#FFB5C5
Which will print:
Acanthocolla_cruciata,#8B5F65
Acanthocyrta_haeckeli,#8B5F65
Acanthometra_fusca,#8B5F65
Acanthopeltis_japonica,#FFB5C5
Rather than a quickfix solution, let's find the problem in your existing code and hence learn from it. Your problem is in the regular expression, so we'll dissect and fix it.
($string =~ m/(.+)+\,+\#+\w{6}/gs)
First, the two significant mistakes that lead to the bug:
At the beginning, you're doing a .+, followed by matching with , and # and so on. The problem is, .+ is greedy, which means it'll match upto the last , in the input, and not the first one. So when you run this, almost the entire line (except for the last plant's color) gets matched up by this single .+.
There are a few different ways you can fix this, but the easiest is to restrict what you're matching. Instead of saying .+ "match anything", make it [\w\s]+ at the beginning - which means match either "word characters" (which includes alphabets and digits) or space characters (since there is a space in the middle of the plant name).
($string =~ m/([\w\s]+)+\,+\#+\w{6}/gs)
That changes the output, but still not to the fully correct version because:
m/some regex/g returns a list of its matches as a list here, and what we want is for it to return the whole match including both plant name and color. But, when there are paranthesis inside the match anywhere, m/ returns only the part matched by the paranthesis (which is the plant name here), not the whole match. So, remove the paranthesis, and it becomes:
($string =~ m/[\w\s]++\,+\#+\w{6}/gs)
This works, but is quite clumsy and bug-prone, so here's some improvement suggestions:
Since your input has no newline characters, the /s at the end is unnecessary.
($string =~ m/[\w\s]++\,+\#+\w{6}/g)
, and # are not a special character in perl regular expressions, so they don't need a \ before them.
($string =~ m/[\w\s]++,+#+\w{6}/g)
+ is for when you know only that the character will be present, but don't know how many times it'll be there. Here, since we're only trying to match one , and one # characters, the + after them is unnecessary.
($string =~ m/[\w\s]++,#\w{6}/g)
The ++ after [\w\s] means something quite different from + (basically an even greedier match than usual), so let's make it a single +
($string =~ m/[\w\s]+,#\w{6}/g)
Optionally, you can change the last \w to match only the hexadecimal characters which will appear in the colour code:
($string =~ m/[\w\s]+,#[0-9A-F]{6}/g)
That's a pretty solid, working regular expression that does what you want.

Using Perl to remove n characters from the end of multiple lines

I want to remove n characters from each line using PERL.
For example, I have the following input:
catbathatxx (length 11; 11%3=2 characters) (Remove 2 characters from this line)
mansunsonx (length 10; 10%3=1 character) (Remove 1 character from this line)
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
open FH, "input.txt";
#array=<FH>;
foreach $tmp(#array)
{
$b=length($tmp)%3;
my $c=substr($tmp, 0, length($tmp)-$b);
print "$c\n";
}
I want to output the final string (after the characters have been removed).
However, this program is not giving the correct result. Can you please guide me on what the mistake is?
Thanks a lot. Please let me know if there are any doubts/clarifications.
I am assuming trailing whitespace is not significant.
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict; use warnings;
use constant MULTIPLE_OF => 3;
while (my $line = <DATA>) {
$line =~ s/\s+\z//;
next unless my $length = length $line;
my $chars_to_remove = $length % MULTIPLE_OF;
$line =~ s/.{$chars_to_remove}\z//;
print $line, "\n";
}
__DATA__
catbathatxx
mansunsonx
0123456789
012345678
The \K regex sequence makes this a lot clearer; it was introduced in Perl v5.10.0.
The code looks like this
use 5.10.0;
use warnings;
for (qw/ catbathatxx mansunsonx /) {
(my $s = $_) =~ s/^ (?:...)* \K .* //x;
say $s;
}
output
catbathat
mansunson
In general you would want to post the result you are getting. That being said...
Each line in the file has a \n (or \r\n on windows) on the end of it that you're not accounting for. You need to chomp() the line.
Edit to add: My perl is getting rusty from non-use but if memory serves me correct you can actually chomp() the entire array after reading the file: chomp(#array)
You should use chomp() on your array, like this:
#array=<FH>;
chomp(#array);
perl -plwe 'chomp; $c = length($_) % 3; chop while $c--' < /tmp/zock.txt
Look up the options in perlrun. Note that line endings are characters, too. Get them out of the way using chomp; re-add them on output using the -l option. Use chop to efficiently remove characters from the end of a string.
Reading your code, you are trying to print just the first 'nx3' characters for the largest value of n for each line.
The following code does this using a simple regular expression.
For each line, it first removes the line ending, then greedy matches
as many .{3} as it can (. matches any character, {3} asks for exactly 3 of them).
The memory requirement of this approach (compared with using an array the size of your file) is fixed. Not too important if your file is small compared with your free memory, but sometimes files are gigabytes, and sometimes memory is very small.
It's always worth using variable names that reflect the purpose of the variable, rather than things like $a or #array. In this case I used only one variable, which I called $line.
It's also good practice to close files as soon as you have finished with them.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings; # This will apply warnings even if you use command perl to run it
open FH, '<', 'input.txt'; # Use three part file open - single quote where no interpolation required.
for my $line (<FH>){
chomp($line);
$line =~ s/((.{3})*).*/$1\n/;
print $line;
}
close FH;

Printing string in Perl

Is there an easy way, using a subroutine maybe, to print a string in Perl without escaping every special character?
This is what I want to do:
print DELIMITER <I don't care what is here> DELIMITER
So obviously it will great if I can put a string as a delimiter instead of special characters.
perldoc perlop, under "Quote and Quote-like Operators", contains everything you need.
While we usually think of quotes as literal values, in Perl they function as operators, providing various kinds of interpolating and pattern matching
capabilities. Perl provides customary quote characters for these behaviors, but also provides a way for you to choose your quote character for any of
them. In the following table, a "{}" represents any pair of delimiters you choose.
Customary Generic Meaning Interpolates
'' q{} Literal no
"" qq{} Literal yes
`` qx{} Command yes*
qw{} Word list no
// m{} Pattern match yes*
qr{} Pattern yes*
s{}{} Substitution yes*
tr{}{} Transliteration no (but see below)
<<EOF here-doc yes*
* unless the delimiter is ''.
$str = q(this is a "string");
print $str;
if you mean quotes and apostrophes with 'special characters'
You can use the __DATA__ directive which will treat all of the following lines as a file that can be accessed from the DATA handle:
while (<DATA>) {
print # or do something else with the lines
}
__DATA__
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use Some::Module;
....
or you can use a heredoc:
my $string = <<'END'; #single quotes prevent any interpolation
#!/usr/bin/perl -b
use Some::Module;
....
END
The printing is not doing special things to the escapes, double quoted strings are doing it. You may want to try single quoted strings:
print 'this is \n', "\n";
In a single quoted string the only characters that must be escaped are single quotes and a backslash that occurs immediately before the end of the string (i.e. 'foo\\').
It is important to note that interpolation does not work with single quoted strings, so
print 'foo is $foo', "\n";
Will not print the contents of $foo.
You can pretty much use any character you want with q or qq. For example:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use utf8;
use strict; use warnings;
print q∞This is a test∞;
print qq☼\nThis is another test\n☼;
print q»But, what is the point?»;
print qq\nYou are just making life hard on yourself!\n;
print qq¿That last one is tricky\n¿;
You cannot use qq DELIMITER foo DELIMITER. However, you could use heredocs for a similar effect:
print <<DELIMITER
...
DELIMETER
;
or
print <<'DELIMETER'
...
DELIMETER
;
but your source code would be really ugly.
If you want to print a string literally and you have Perl 5.10 or later then
say 'This is a string with "quotes"' ;
will print the string with a newline.. The importaning thing is to use single quotes ' ' rather than double ones " "

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