What kind of markup is that? Is it XML? (if it is, XML parsers don't seem to like it). Assuming you're actually passing valid XML, this doesn't have to be a "pattern matching question"; you could just do this: 

use strict;
use warnings;

use XML::Simple;

use Data::Dumper;

my $xml = <<'HERE';
<ContentItem>
<TextItem>
<TextItemType>03</TextItemType>
<FirstPageNumber>29</FirstPageNumber>
<LastPageNumber>56</LastPageNumber>
<NumberOfPages>28</NumberOfPages>
</TextItem>
<ComponentTypeName>Chapter</ComponentTypeName>
<DistinctiveTitle>The emergence of an Islamic</DistinctiveTitle>
</ContentItem>
<ContentItem>
<TextItem>
<TextItemType>03</TextItemType>
<FirstPageNumber>29</FirstPageNumber>
<LastPageNumber>34</LastPageNumber>
<NumberOfPages>6</NumberOfPages>
</TextItem>
<ComponentTypeName>Chapter</ComponentTypeName>
<DistinctiveTitle>The Arab Conquests</DistinctiveTitle>
</ContentItem>
HERE

my $ref = XMLin( $xml, ForceArray => 1 );

print Dumper $ref;

[download]

This doesn't run correctly, because the data I'm sending to XMLin() isn't understood to be valid XML by XML::Simple, but if what you've shown us is just not complete, wheras what you're working with is, this would run fine, and would place the XML document into a datastructure that's being dumped by Data::Dumper.

And then the next step would be to just figure out which portion of the datastructure contains the data you want. No regexps, no guesswork. :)


Dave

In reply to Re: Pattern matching question by davido
in thread Pattern matching question by perlsen

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