match using regex in perl - regex

Question

HI I am trying to exract some data from a text file in perl. My file looks like this
Name:John
FirstName:Smith
Name:Alice
FirstName:Meyers
....
I want my string to look like John Smith and Alice Meyers
I tried something like this but I'm stuck and I don't know how to continue
while (<INPUT>) {
if (/^[Name]/) {
$match =~ /(:)(.*?)(\n) /
$string = $string.$2;
}
if (/^[FirstName]/) {
$match =~ /(:)(.*?)(\n)/
$string = $string.$2;
}
}
What I try to do is that when I match Name or FirstName to copy to content between : and \n but I get confused which is $1 and $2

Answer 1

This will put you first and last names in a hash:
use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;
open my $in, '<', 'in.txt';
my (%data, $names, $firstname);
while(<$in>){
chomp;
($names) = /Name:(.*)/ if /^Name/;
($firstname) = /FirstName:(.*)/ if /^FirstName/;
$data{$names} = $firstname;
}
print Dumper \%data;

Answer 2

Through perl one-liner,
$ perl -0777 -pe 's/(?m).*?Name:([^\n]*)\nFirstName:([^\n]*).*/\1 \2/g' file
John Smith
Alice Meyers

Answer 3

while (<INPUT>) {
/^([A-Za-z])+\:\s*(.*)$/;
if ($1 eq 'Name') {
$surname = $2;
} elsif ($1 eq 'FirstName') {
$completeName = $2 . " " . $surname;
} else {
/* Error */
}
}
You might want to add some error handling, e.g. make sure that a Name is always followed by a FirstName and so on.

Answer 4

$1 $2 $3 .. $N , it's the capture result of () inside regex.
If you do something like that , you cant avoid using $1 like variables.
my ($matched1,$matched2) = $text =~ /(.*):(.*)/
my $names = [];
my $name = '';
while(my $row = <>){
$row =~ /:(.*)/;
$name = $name.' '.$1;
push(#$names,$name) if $name =~ / /;
$name = '' if $name =~ / /;
}
`while(<>){
}
`

Answer 5

open (FH,'abc.txt');
my(%hash,#array);
map{$_=~s/.*?://g;chomp($_);push(#array,$_)} <FH>;
%hash=#array;
print Dumper \%hash;