Hello Monks, I am trying to read in a file, search for a hash, replace all the text within two hash keys, and then write the changed data back into the file. I wrote a function called truncateText() to that uses the hash keys as the key words for the beginning and end of the block I need. My function to parse text between two keywords works but I am having difficulty replacing the data in the file. I haven't written the code yet to write back into the file because the data wasn't getting replaced accurately. Thank you so much monks for your endless wisdom. 

sub populateHash{

    my $inputFile = 'input.txt';
    
    my $fileContent = do {
        open(my $fileHandle, $inputFile ) or die "Could not open file 
+'$inputFile ' $!";
    
        local $/;
        <$fileHandle>;
    };

    my $hashData = truncateText($fileContent, "key1 => {", "key2 =>");
    my $dataToReplace = truncateText($hashData, "END_SEARCH_PATHS", "E
+ND_SEARCH_PATHS");

    #Removes Comments works best if called multiple times
        $dataToReplace =~ s/\#.*//;
    $dataToReplace =~ s/\#.*//;
    $dataToReplace =~ s/\#.*//;
    $dataToReplace =~ s/\#.*//;

        #replacementData was gathered in another function and stored i
+n a global variable
    $fileContent =~ s/$dataToReplace/$replacementData/g;


    print Dumper($fileContent);

}

sub truncateText{
    #Truncates text by removing everything before and and after the pa
+ssed in variables
    
    my($text, $beginString, $endString) = @_;

    my $truncatedText;

    if($text =~ /\Q$beginString\E(.*?)\Q$endString\E/s){
        $truncatedText = $1;
        #print $truncatedText;    
    }

    return $truncatedText;

}

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In reply to Replacing a block of text inside two keys with another block of text by victorz22

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