bill b has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi,

I need to search for

.PP

blah blah blah

.PP

How do I search across 3 lines exactly? This didn't work

/^\.PP.*\n.*\n^\.PP/

TIA,

Bill

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: match across specified # of lines
by hbm (Hermit) on Jun 13, 2013 at 14:43 UTC

    Make your dot-stars non-greedy, and use the 'm' modifier: 

    $_="
Blah
junk
.PP
blah more stuff
.PP
boo
razz
";
print $1 if /^(\.PP.*?\n.*?\n\.PP)/m;
#prints
.PP
blah more stuff
.PP

    [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
      Thanks! That worked! I did have the m appended but forgot to type it. Your solution really helped a lot. Cheers!
[reply]
Re: match across specified # of lines
by Anonymous Monk on Jun 13, 2013 at 14:38 UTC

    This didn't work

    Of course :) it doesn't read a file, or set the value of $_ in any way, so $_ is undef, and then there is nothing to match, so the matching doesn't work

    You need to examine the value of $_, Data::Dump/er it , its Basic debugging checklist

[reply]
      Thanks for the pointer!
[reply]

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