this works for me

use strict;
use warnings;

while (<DATA>) {
    print if /\.$/;
}


__DATA__
Inventories

Trade receivables

Assets

This item includes impairment losses.
[download]

-->

This item includes impairment losses.
[download]

Dear LanX,

thanks for the fast reply. With this code as well the lines (Inventories, Trade receiveables, Assets) in my text file are not recognized. Is there something wrong with the textfile and how can I change it?

maybe try also a chomp $text in your code.

update

here several methods to clarify what your file contains.

I prefer Data::Dump but you might not have it installed.

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dump qw/dd/;
use Data::Dumper;

while (<DATA>) {
    chomp;
    print "<$_>\n" if /\.$/;
    dd $_;
    warn Dumper $_;
}


__DATA__
Inventories

Trade receivables

Assets

This item includes impairment losses.
[download]

with chomp

$VAR1 = 'Inventories';
$VAR1 = '';
$VAR1 = 'Trade receivables';
$VAR1 = '';
$VAR1 = 'Assets';
$VAR1 = '';
$VAR1 = 'This item includes impairment losses.';
"Inventories"
""
"Trade receivables"
""
"Assets"
""
<This item includes impairment losses.>
"This item includes impairment losses."
[download]

without chomp

$VAR1 = 'Inventories
';
$VAR1 = '
';
$VAR1 = 'Trade receivables
';
$VAR1 = '
';
$VAR1 = 'Assets
';
$VAR1 = '
';
$VAR1 = 'This item includes impairment losses.
';
"Inventories\n"
"\n"
"Trade receivables\n"
"\n"
"Assets\n"
"\n"
<This item includes impairment losses.
>
"This item includes impairment losses.\n"
[download]

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery FootballPerl is like chess, only without the dice}

> the lines (Inventories, Trade receiveables, Assets) in my text file are not recognized.
• What do you mean "not recognized", are they are printed?
• What happens if you run my code?
• What happens if you copy my DATA lines into a file?

My guess is that your input is different to what you think.

Do you probably have weird line endings?

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery FootballPerl is like chess, only without the dice}

Even if your disc file is exactly what you expect, you must fix your regex to match and remove the newlines from the unwanted lines.

use strict;
use warnings;
my $file = \do{my $disk_file =
     "Inventorier\n"
    ."Trade receivables\n" 
    ."Assets\n"
    ."This item includes impairment losses.\n"
    ;
};


open (IN,'<:encoding(UTF-8)', $file) or die "Could not open '$file'$!"
+;
*OUT = *stdout;


    while (my $text = <IN>) {

    #$text =~ s/^[a-z].*[a-z]$//gmi;
    $text =~ s/^[a-z].*[a-z]\n$//i;

      print OUT $text;

    }

  close (IN) or die "Could not close input file: '$file' $!";
[download]

Note that I have not made any other changes to your posted code (except to remove the looping and the output files.) Even though this should 'work', I prefer LanX's first suggestion.

Bill

I can confirm that your code works fine for me on Linux when the input file has LF line endings, but not when it has CRLF line endings. So I am guessing that is the problem, to confirm, see the Basic debugging checklist and use e.g. Data::Dumper with $Data::Dumper::Useqq=1; turned on. If CRLF is indeed the issue, there are a couple of ways to fix this: You could add the :crlf PerlIO layer when reading the files, as in open (IN,'<:raw:encoding(UTF-8):crlf', $file) (note I added the :raw as technically, the CRLF conversion should happen after the decoding, although that shouldn't really be a problem with UTF-8 I believe); you could convert the files before processing using e.g. fromdos from Tofrodos; or you could change the regex to adapt, as in s/^[a-z].*[a-z]\r?$//gmi (wouldn't be my preferred solution, but TIMTOWTDI).

Another way would be to use the $INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR Like this he could adapt to any ending.

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery FootballPerl is like chess, only without the dice}

haukex,

I suspected the record-separator issue so I wrote my test case (above) to allow me to experiment with them. I duplicated the original problem when I thought that I was simulating newline separators and the original regex and concluded that the problem was with the regex. Your comments and the OP's conclusions strongly suggest that I was wrong. Can you explain how my memory file fails to simulate the test case you used to confirm the original code?

OOPS, Simulation is correct. The problem is not duplicated. "Deleted" lines are replaced with a newline. This may be intentional.

Bill

Can you explain how my memory file fails to simulate the test case you used to confirm the original code?

If you change the \n's (LF) in your $disk_file to \r\n (CRLF), you should see the problem that looks like what the OP was describing.

G'day thurinus,

Welcome to the Monastery.

As already indicated, it's likely you have line terminators not matching the '$'. You may have more success using '\R', the generic newline. See perlrebackslash: \R and note you'll need at least Perl v5.10 to use this.

Here's a quick-and-dirty example to compare '$' with '\R':

$ perl -E '
    my @x = (
        "A\n", "B.\n",
        "C\r", "D.\r",
        "E\r\n", "F.\r\n",
        "G\f", "H.\f"
    );
    say q{*** With $ ***};
    say "|$_|" for grep /\.$/, @x;
    say q{*** With \R ***};
    say "|$_|" for grep /\.\R/, @x;
'
*** With $ ***
|B.
|
*** With \R ***
|B.
|
|D.
|F.
|
|H.
   |
[download]

In case you didn't know, the '\f' is a form-feed.

Dear Monks,

the line terminators were the issue and I could fix it with your help and suggestions.

Thanks a lot for your help!