Sorry I should have clarified a bit more. Here is an example file I'm working with.

ASDF_ONE {
    magic
    tmp
    tmp
}
ASDF_TWO {
    tmp
    tmp
    tmp
}
string3 {
    tmp
    tmp
    magic
}

[download]

Some sections have a common prefix, like ASDF_. I want a function in my program to scan a specific section for the magic word using an argument. The function returns true if word is found, else returns false. See code below for how I want to structure this:

use warnings;
use strict;

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

sub has_word {
    my $arg = $_[0];
    local $/;
    open FILE, '<', $file;

    while ( <FILE> ) {
        if ( m/(ASDF_$arg \{)(.*?)magic(.*?)(\})/s ) {
            close FILE;
            return 1;
        } else {
            close FILE;
            return 0;
        }
    }
}

sub main {
    if (has_word("ONE")) {
        print "ONE already has the word.\n";
    } else {
        print "ONE does not have the word.\n";
    }
    if (has_word("TWO")) {
        print "TWO already has the word.\n";
    } else {
        print "TWO does not have the word.\n";
    }
}

main;

[download]

The output I get is:

ONE already has the word.
TWO already has the word.

[download]

I think this .*? is searching for any character including the closing brace }.

In reply to Re^4: Matching a string in a parenthesized block (regex help) by maxamillionk
in thread Matching a string in a parenthesized block (regex help) by maxamillionk

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.