ah ha! In my foolish frustration I forgot about the perl cookbook and its wealth of useful data. Sadly I consulted google (with very poor search terms no less (shame upon me)) and when it turned up crap that wasn't helpful, I got lazy and posted to here - after checking the tutorials section.
The "s///ms" trick is going into my working memory. I thank thee for pointing it out to me.
In regards to the rolling my own code for parsing out html/xml, I sort of am, but not without good reason. The program in progress needs to have some files in html format for no terribly good reason (insert boss module) and so it shall be. And in regards to CPAN, lets just say an overly paranoid sysadmin stands between me and that alternative. I could of course go for the  use lib '/bla/foo/meh' option, but for other reasons too complex waste your time on, that also isn't workable (see site inconsistency).
Ending rant before I realize what a crappy assignment I have and quit.

Again thanks a lot for the help.


jcpunk
all code is tested, and doesn't work so there :p (varient on common PM sig for my own ammusment)

In reply to Re: Re: multi line matching problem by jcpunk
in thread multi line matching problem by jcpunk

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.