This class of problem may be addressed to some degree by the CPAN module, Text::Balanced. But it looks like you may run into the harder problem of parsing Perl. The PPI module can be helpful, though there are cases where even parsing is not as straightforward as one would expect. Regexes are not generally the appropriate solution for things like code parsing or balanced text parsing. You end up working way too hard on a regex solution that still falls short.

tchrist gave an excellent write-up on StackOverflow on why it is possible but usually inadvisable to use regexes as the primary engine in parsing non-trivial inputs (in the case of the writeup, he was talking about HTML, but the reply is applicable here as well). See Oh Yes You Can Use Regexes to Parse HTML!. It all boils down to the amount of work required to get a robust solution using regexes for this sort of thing will usually exceed the amount of work you will go through in using a proper parsing tool. It may seem like a lot of work learning to use these other tools, but not as much as it often takes to properly deal with all of the edge cases using only regexes.


Dave

In reply to Re: Multiline string and one line comments by davido
in thread Multiline string and one line comments by AskandLearn

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