Re: how to write multi-line regex

Your input looks like a perfect candidate for "paragraph mode" using the switches -n and -00 (see perlrun):

#!/usr/bin/perl -n00

/^TEXT;\nLAYER 13[1-7];\nTEXTTYPE 0;.+STRING (.+?);/s and print $1,"\n
+";
[download]

The //s modifier is necessary, since without it, the "." character would not match a newline.

perl -le'print map{pack c,($-++?1:13)+ord}split//,ESEL'

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Re^2: how to write multi-line regex by kcott (Archbishop) on Mar 25, 2014 at 04:15 UTC
As well as the '`s`' modifier which, as you correctly state, is needed for '`.`' to match a newline; you'll also need the '`m`' modifier for '`^`' to match the start of each line in a multi-line string (which paragraph mode [`-00`] will give you). Without this modifier, '`^`' will match only once at the start of the string. ("perlre: Modifiers" and "perlre: Metacharacters" have details of both of those.) The following two points are really more a comment on the way the OP posted the sample data than on your solution. The start of the regex (`/^TEXT ...`) assumes `TEXT` starts at the beginning of a line. While I agree that is likely to be the case for the real data, the HTML source for the posted data suggests otherwise: `<p> ... <br /> ... <br /> TEXT; <br /> LAYER 133;` [download] The two '`\n`'s in the regex suffer from a similar problem. While it's likely that the real data has lines that are only separated by a single newline, the posted data has additional whitespace before and after various lines. -- Ken	[reply] [d/l] [select]

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Re^2: how to write multi-line regex
by kcott (Archbishop) on Mar 25, 2014 at 04:15 UTC

As well as the 's' modifier which, as you correctly state, is needed for '.' to match a newline; you'll also need the 'm' modifier for '^' to match the start of each line in a multi-line string (which paragraph mode [-00] will give you). Without this modifier, '^' will match only once at the start of the string. ("perlre: Modifiers" and "perlre: Metacharacters" have details of both of those.)

The following two points are really more a comment on the way the OP posted the sample data than on your solution.

The start of the regex (/^TEXT ...) assumes TEXT starts at the beginning of a line. While I agree that is likely to be the case for the real data, the HTML source for the posted data suggests otherwise:

<p>
...
<br />
...
<br />
 TEXT;
<br />
LAYER 133;
[download]

The two '\n's in the regex suffer from a similar problem. While it's likely that the real data has lines that are only separated by a single newline, the posted data has additional whitespace before and after various lines.

-- Ken

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