lsearch and spaces

[Johnny Anderson]

CL v5.8, HL7 v2.3.1, Sun, Solaris 10

In a tclproc, I have this lsearch working: set index1 [lsearch -regexp $list1 $pattern1], but only when there are no spaces in $list1 and $pattern1.

I can remove all spaces from both and then get a match but I’d rather know if there’s a way to include spaces in both.

Example: I want $list1 line “abc  xyz” to match $pattern1 line “abc  xyz”.

I’ve searched the forum and manuals but can’t find anything about spaces.

Topic

[Charlie Bursell]

lsearch tests against list elements.  If you have a single list element that contains “abc xyz” then yout pattern should match.  But not if abc and xyz are different elements of a list.

For example

set list1

lsearch -regexp $list1 {abc xyz}

=> 0

Of course you could have used -exact instead of -regexp

[James Cobane]

Johnny,

Any list element that contains spaces must be enclosed in curly braces to be treated as a single element; spaces are considered list element separators, so if list1 is “abc xyz 123” and not “{abc xyz} 123”, it will essentially be a list with 3 elements, not 2.

i.e.

set list1

set pattern1 “abc xyz”

lsearch -regexp $list1 $pattern1

Hope this helps.

Jim Cobane

Henry Ford Health

[Johnny Anderson]

Charlie, James, thanks.  Its working now.

[Author]

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