Perl: Help writing a regular expression

Question

I am trying to write a common regular expression for the below 3 cases:

• Supernatural_S07E23_720p_HDTV_X264-DIMENSION.mkv
• the.listener.313.480p.hdtv.x264-2hd.mkv
• How.I.met.your.mother.s02e07.hdtv.x264-xor.avi

Now my regular exoression should remove the series name from the original string i,e the output of above string will be:

• S07E23_720p_HDTV_X264-DIMENSION.mkv
• 313.480p.hdtv.x264-2hd.mkv
• s02e07.hdtv.x264-xor.avi

Now for the basic case of supernatural string I wrote the below regex and it worked fine but as soon as the series name got multiple words it fails.

$string =~ s/^(.*?)[\.\_\- ]//i; #delimiter can be (. - _ )

So, I have no idea how to proceed for the aboves cases I was thinking along the lines of \\w+{1,6} but it also failed to do the required.

PS: Explanation of what the regular expression is doing will be appreciated.

Answer 1

you can detect if the .'s next token contains digit, if not, consider it as part of the name.

HOWEVER, I personally think there is no perfect solution for this. it'd still meet problem for something like:

24.313.480p.hdtv.x264-2hd.mkv            // 24
Warehouse.13.s02e07.hdtv.x264-xor.avi    // warehouse 13

Answer 2

As StanleyZ said, you'll always get into trouble with names containing numbers.

But, if you take these special cases appart, you can try :

#perl

$\=$/;

map {

    if (/^([\w\.]+)[\.\_]([SE\d]+[\.\_].*)$/i) {
        print "Match : Name='$1'        Suffix='$2'";
    } else {
        print "Did not match $_";
    }
}
qw!
    Supernatural_S07E23_720p_HDTV_X264-DIMENSION.mkv
    the.listener.313.480p.hdtv.x264-2hd.mkv
    How.I.met.your.mother.s02e07.hdtv.x264-xor.avi
  !;

which outputs :

Match : Name='Supernatural'     Suffix='S07E23_720p_HDTV_X264-DIMENSION.mkv'
Match : Name='the.listener'     Suffix='313.480p.hdtv.x264-2hd.mkv'
Match : Name='How.I.met.your.mother'     Suffix='s02e07.hdtv.x264-xor.avi'

note : aren't you doing something illegal ? ;)