If you want to match [==========] in a regex, you need to escape the square brackets — otherwise they form a character class.

However, this approach cannot work: you are reading the data file line-by-line, which to Perl means from one newline (\n) to the next, but a typical line of input looks like this:

< 0x00070: 2d 64 6f 77  6e 0d 0a 5b  3d 3d 3d 3d  3d 3d 3d 3d  -down..
+[========

[download]

As can be seen, there are no lines which match [==========]. Likewise, the special regex character ^ matches at the beginning of a line, and neither [==========] nor tests appears at the beginning of a line.

You will need a different strategy, along the lines outlined by hippo below.

Hope that helps,

Athanasius <°(((>< contra mundum Iustus alius egestas vitae, eros Piratica,

In reply to Re^3: Parsing a text file in Perl. by Athanasius
in thread Parsing a text file in Perl. by ramki067

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.