Matching a variable in a string in Perl from the end - regex

Question

I want to match a variable character in a given string, but from the end.
Ideas on how to do this action?
for example:
sub removeCharFromEnd {
my $string = shift;
my $char = shift;
if($string =~ m/$char/){ // I want to match the char, searching from the end, $doesn't work
print "success";
}
}
Thank you for your assistance.

Answer 1

There is no regex modifier that would force Perl regex engine to parse the string from right to left. Thus, the most convenient way to achieve that is via a negative lookahead:
m/$char(?!.*$char)/
The (?!.*$char) negative lookahead will require the absence (=will fail the match if found) of a $char after any 0+ chars other than linebreak chars (use s modifier if you are running the regex against a multiline string input).

Answer 2

The regex engine works from left to right.
You can use the natural greediness of quantifiers to reach the end of the string and find the last char with the backtracking mechanism:
if($string =~ m/.*\K$char/s) { ...
\K marks the position of the match result beginning.
Other ways:
you can also reverse the string and use your previous pattern.
you can search all occurrences and take the last item in the list

Answer 3

I'm having trouble understanding what you want. Your subroutine is called removeCharFromEnd, so perhaps you want to remove $char from $string if it appears at the end of the string
You can do that like this
sub removeCharFromEnd {
my ( $string, $char ) = #_;
if ( $string =~ s/$char\z// ) {
print "success";
}
$string;
}
Or perhaps you want to remove the last occurrence of $char wherever it is. You can do that with
s/.*\K$char//
The subroutine I have written returns the modified string, so you would have to assign the result to a variable to save it. You can write
my $s = 'abc';
$s = removeCharFromEnd($s, 'c');
say $s;
output
ab
If you just want to modify the string in place then you should write
$ARGV[0] =~ s/$char\z//
using whichever substitution you choose. Then you can do this
my $s = 'abc';
removeCharFromEnd($s, 'c');
say $s;
This produces the same output

Answer 4

To get Perl to search from the end of a string, reverse the string.
sub removeCharFromEnd {
my $string = reverse shift #_;
my $char = quotemeta reverse shift #_;
$string =~ s/$char//;
$string = reverse $string;
return $string;
}
print removeCharFromEnd(qw( abcabc b )), "\n";
print removeCharFromEnd(qw( abcdefabcdef c )), "\n";
print removeCharFromEnd(qw( !"/$%?&*!"/$%?&* $ )), "\n";