RegEx match for multiline in Perl

Question

I have following data line i need to parse in Perl:

  my $string='Upper Left  (  440720.000, 3751320.000) (117d38\'28.21"W, 33d54\'8.47"N)';

Here is my perl script:

  if ($string=~ m/Upper Left\s+[(]\s+\d{1,6}[.]\d{1,3}[\,]\s+\d{1,6}[.]\d{1,3}[)]\s+[(](\d{1,3})d(\d{1,2})['](\d{1,2})[.](\d{1,2})/ig) {
    $upperLeft="lat=". $1. 'd'. $2. "'". $3. ".". $4. '"W long='. $5. 'd'. $6. "'". $7. ".". $8. '"W';
    print $upperLeft. "\n";
   }

However this expression fails to 117d38'28.21" as lat and 33d54'8.47 as long. Note the space and '(' in the input $string which i use to create this regular expression.

What I am I doing wrong in extracting (117d38'28.21"W, 33d54'8.47"N) into 8 fields? Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

You had several issues. The main being your regex just parsing up to lat, not lon.

What changed:

m/Upper Left\s+[(]\s+\d{1,6}[.]\d{1,3}[\,]\s+\d{1,6}[.]\d{1,3}[)]\s+[(](\d{1,3})d(\d{1,2})['](\d{1,2})[.](\d{1,2})/ig
m/Upper Left\s+[(]\s+\d{1,6}[.]\d{1,3}[\,]\s+\d{1,7}[.]\d{1,3}[)]\s+[(](\d{1,3})d(\d{1,2})['](\d{1,2})[.](\d{1,2})"([WE])[\,]\s(\d{1,3})d(\d{1,2})['](\d{1,2})[.](\d{1,2})"([NS])/ig
                                                  ^-- Your test number was 7-digit big                             ^-- (1)     ^-- (2)                                     ^-- (3)

At the ending: (1) added group to deal with W/E (([WE])). (2) Added groups to extract lon number. (3) Added group to deal with N/S (([NS])).

Your code, corrected:

if ($string=~ m/Upper Left\s+[(]\s+\d{1,6}[.]\d{1,3}[\,]\s+\d{1,7}[.]\d{1,3}[)]\s+[(](\d{1,3})d(\d{1,2})['](\d{1,2})[.](\d{1,2})"([WE])[\,]\s(\d{1,3})d(\d{1,2})['](\d{1,2})[.](\d{1,2})"([NS])/ig) {
    $upperLeft = "lat=" . $1 . 'd' . $2 . "'" . $3 . "." . $4 . '"' . $5 . " long=" . $6 . 'd' . $7 . "'" . $8 . "." . $9 . '"' . $10;
    print $upperLeft. "\n";
}

Output:

lat=117d38'28.21"W long=33d54'8.47"N