-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME
thanks thanks thanks
(I only understand it about 50% so far...)

(I only understand it about 50% so far...)

Well let me see if I can shed some light.

$ret = $1 if $g =~ /\n\s*\n((?m:^#.*\n)+)$id/;
[download]

The first bit is obviously just assigning $1 to $ret if the pattern matches. That's the easy part. Now let's look at the pattern.

/\n\s*\n        # This matches your blank line between comments.
 (              # Capture into $1.
   (?m:         # Don't capture, but match this group as multiline. Wh
+ich means match '^' and '$'
                # at the beginning or end of any line in the string.
      ^#        # Match the comment delimiter at the start of a line.
      .*\n      # Match everything up to, and including, the newline a
+t the end of a line.
   )+           # Match this group one or more times.
 )              # End of $1 capture.
 $id            # This is the key you're looking for.
/x
[download]

Very well done. sauoq++

kelan

---

Yak it up with Fullscreen ChatBox

It ain't pretty, but using the sexeger (reverse regex) technique, which can no doubt be implemented better, this works.

It requires you start with your lines in an unchomped array rather than a single line though.

my @g=<DATA>;

my $id = 'key3';

my $g = join'',reverse @g;

if (my ($ret) = $g =~ m/^$id=.*?\n(.*?)\n\n/s) {
    $ret = join$/,reverse split$/,$ret;
    print $ret;
} else {
    print 'Failed!'.$/;
}

__DATA__
## START

# comment 1
#     2
#     3
#     4
key1=val1

# info   a
#     b
#     c
#     d
#     e
key2=val2

# comment !
#     @
#     #
key3=val3
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Did you ever consider using Config::IniFiles ?
Could save you a lot of time..