Perl - How to change every $variable occurrence of ";" in a string - perl

Question

Very new here so be gentle. :)
Here is the jist of what I want to do:
I want to take a string that is made up of numbers separated by semi-colons (ex. 6;7;8;9;1;17;4;5;90) and replace every "X" number of semicolons with a "\n" instead. The "X" number will be defined by the user.
So if:
$string = "6;7;8;9;1;17;4;5;90";
$Nth_number_of_semicolons_to_replace = 3;
The output should be:
6;7;8\n9;1;17\n4;5;90
I've found lots on changing the Nth occurrence of something but I haven't been able to find anything on changing every Nth occurrence of something like I am trying to describe above.
Thanks for all your help!

Answer 1

use List::MoreUtils qw(natatime);
my $input_string = "6;7;8;9;1;17;4;5;90";
my $it = natatime 3, split(";", $input_string);
my $output_string;
while (my #vals = $it->()) {
$output_string .= join(";", #vals)."\n";
}

Answer 2

Here is a quick and dirty answer.
my $input_string = "6;7;8;9;1;17;4;5;90";
my $count = 0;
$input_string =~ s/;/++$count % 3 ? ";" : "\n"/eg;

Answer 3

Don't have time for a full answer now, but this should get you started.
$string = "6;7;8;9;1;17;4;5;90";
$Nth_number_of_semicolons_to_replace = 3;
my $regexp = '(' . ('\d+;' x ($Nth_number_of_semicolons_to_replace - 1)) . '\d+);';
$string =~ s{ $regexp ) ; }{$1\n}xsmg

Answer 4

sub split_x{
my($str,$num,$sep) = #_;
return unless defined $str;
$num ||= 1;
$sep = ';' unless defined $sep;
my #return;
my #tmp = split $sep, $str;
while( #tmp >= $num ){
push #return, join $sep, splice #tmp, 0, $num;
}
push #return, join $sep, #tmp if #tmp;
return #return;
}
print "$_\n" for split_x '6;7;8;9;1;17;4;5;90', 3
print join( ',', split_x( '6;7;8;9;1;17;4;5;90', 3 ) ), "\n";

Answer 5

my $string = "6;7;8;9;1;17;4;5;90";
my $Nth_number_of_semicolons_to_replace = 3;
my $num = $Nth_number_of_semicolons_to_replace - 1;
$string =~ s{ ( (?:[^;]+;){$num} [^;]+ ) ; }{$1\n}gx;
print $string;
prints:
6;7;8
9;1;17
4;5;90
The regex explained:
s{
( # start of capture group 1
(?:[^;]+;){$num} # any number of non ';' characters followed by a ';'
# repeated $num times
[^;]+ # any non ';' characters
) # end of capture group
; # the ';' to replace
}{$1\n}gx; # replace with capture group 1 followed by a new line

Answer 6

If you've got 5.10 or higher, this could do the trick:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
my $string = '1;2;3;4;5;6;7;8;9;0';
my $n = 3;
my $search = ';.*?' x ($n -1);
print "string before: [$string]\n";
$string =~ s/$search\K;/\n/g;
print "print string after: [$string]\n";
HTH,
Paul