Jose Malacara wrote:
> Can someone please provide some assitance with a multi-line matching
> problem? I have a datafile that looks like this:
>
> #### Input file ########
> START
> foo1
> bar1
> END
> START
> foo2
> bar2
> END
> START
> foo3
> bar3
> END
>
> I am trying to capture the contents between the START and END
> delineators. Here is what I have so far:
>
> #### Script ########
> #!/usr/bin/perl
> $input_file = $ARGV[0];
> open (INPUT, "<$input_file") or die "Cannot open $input_file file: $!";
> local $/;
> while (<INPUT>){
> if ( $_ =~ m/^\s*START\s+(.+?)\s+END$/smi ) {
> print "$1\n";
> }
> }
> close (INPUT);
>
> However, when I run the script it only appears to match the START/END
> sequence the first time. This is what I get:
>
> #### Result ########
> # ./test.pl file
> foo1
> bar1
>
> This is what I'm trying to achieve:
> # ./test.pl file
> foo1
> bar1
> foo2
> bar2
> foo3
> bar3
>
> Is the While loop required since I am actually slurping the file
> contents into a single variable? Is there a (better) mechanism to
> continue matching against the string if its matched once? Any help
> would be greatly appreciated!
Here is one way to do it:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
$input_file = shift;
open INPUT, '<', $input_file or die "Cannot open $input_file file: $!";
local $/ = "END\n";
while ( <INPUT> ) {
s/.*START\n//;
print;
}
close INPUT;
__END__
John
--
use Perl;
program
fulfillment
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