OK, given the clarification that the number of parens will be unknown, the regex solution will require anchoring the last ")" to the end of the line (if that's not the case, you'll need to pursue a more complex regex-approach, or another (perhaps part of the List::... family?).

<Update>: I misread a bit of your latest node: You have figured out ONE ASPECT of quantifiers. So read about them more deeply. Perl provides a mechanism for using a range... and that, combined with the hint below, should solve your problem.</Update>

The references I gave earlier stand and I add the note that regexen permit use of a "$" sign as an anchor to the end of string. (NB: "string" and "line" don't necessarily mean the same thing, but if you have an expression with an unknown number of parens and (possibly) unknown number of lines or placements of the parens, go for a module designed to parse your specific data-format.

Chew on that for a bit and as you do, read up on regexen. You'll learn more that way than asking multiple questions whose answers grow out of basic knowledge, such as can be acquired from perldoc, man pages, and, if necessary, additional tutorials, books, etc.


Spirit of the Monastery

In reply to Re^5: Parsing Strings by ww
in thread Parsing Strings by doofus

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