Getting a random word from a string.

[adni18]

Hi. I would like to know how to, preferrably in regexp, get a random word in a string, making sure that the word is not enclosed in a <script> or <noscript> <!-- tag. Could someone please help me?

[DrDoc]

Assuming the string is contained in $_:

s{<script[ >].*?</script>¦<noscript[ >].*?</noscript>¦<!--.*?-->}{}isg;
s{<.*?>(.*?)</.*?>}{}sg;
split(/\b/);
$randomword = $_[rand($#_ - 1)]

[adni18]

I'm sorry, but that doesn't work on my system. Am I incorporating this into my script the right way? BTW i did replace the broken pipes.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);

$context="hi this is a test";
print "Content-type:text/html\n\n";
&getRandom($context);

sub getRandom {
s{<script[ >].*?</script>¦<noscript[ >].*?</noscript>¦<!--.*?-->}{}isg;
s{<.*?>(.*?)</.*?>}{}sg;
split(/\b/);
$randomword = $_[rand($#_ - 1)];
print $randomword;
}

[DrDoc]

It should work, except for one thing -- add the following line to your sub routine:

[perl]sub getRandom {
$_ = $context;
...
}[/perl]

[DrDoc]

Actually, one more thing...

In the split function the string is split by

\b

, which is a "word boundary". This, however, results in spaces and such being captured as their own 'words'. You may want to replace

\b

with an actual match of word delimiting characters you want to target. Perhaps something like this might work better:

split(/[^[:alnum:]]+/);

And, while you're at it... the

rand()

function should actually be:

$randomword = $_[rand($#_ + 1)];