Hi,

I want to work with a file formatted like this:

ASDF {
    tmp
    plz_match
    tmp
}
string2 {
    tmp
}
string3 {
    tmp
    plz_match
    tmp
}

[download]

I want to know if some arbitrary string (plz_match) exists within one of those parenthesized contexts. I am interested in the block called ASDF and do not want to scan the other blocks.

I'm not sure why this regex keeps telling me there is no match. I have tried all manner of variations and I am obviously missing something...

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;

my $file = "/path/to/file.txt";

local $/;  # added after post
open FILE, '<', $file;
my $content = <FILE>;
close FILE;

if ( $content =~ m/(?<=ASDF {)(.*)plz_match(.*?)(?=})/s ) {
    print "Matched: |$`<$&>$'|\n";
} else {
    print "No match: |$content|\n";

[download]

In reply to Matching a string in a parenthesized block (regex help) by maxamillionk

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