I'm trying to extract strings from a data file where the to be extracted information is between tags.
If the strings have no multiple lines (\n) the regular expression works but it fails when the strings have multiple lines.
The data has the following structure (only <tag2> can have multiple lines):

<tag1>[abcd]</tag1>Blah, blah, blah?: <tag2>Yes</tag2>
<tag1>[efgh]</tag1>Yadah, yadah?: <tag2>1) Foo;
2) Bar;
3) Quux;
</tag2>
<tag1>[ijkl]</tag1>Blah?: <tag2>Yes</tag2>
<tag1>[mnop]</tag1>Blah, bleh?:  <tag2>Yes, I will.
If this and that</tag2>

[download]

What I want to extract is the strings between <tag1> and <tag2> tags.
The code: 

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
open (DATA, "data.txt") or die "Error";
undef $/; # slurp mode
$body=<DATA>;
close DATA;

while ( $body =~ /<tag1>\[(\w+)\]<\/tag1>.*<tag2>(.*)<\/tag2>/g ) {
    print "[$1] => [$2]\n";
}

[download]

It should print: 

[abcd] => [yes]
[efgh] => [1) Foo; 2) Bar; Quux;]
[ijkl] => [Yes]
[mnop] => [Yes, I will. If this and that.]

[download]

Instead it only prints [abcd] and [ijkl], the r.e. does not work if the string in <tag2> has multiple lines.
I tried several combinations with s and g modifier and .*? but can't get anything to work.
I think the problem is in the part made bold:

$body =~ /<tag1>\[(\w+)\]<\/tag1>.*<tag2>(.*)<\/tag2>/g

I'm overlooking something but don't know what... :(

In reply to Regular expression for grabbing strings with multiple lines between tags by Max_NL

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.