Interesting.

The docs indicate that the s flag causes the input string to be treated as if it's a single line. The m flag, on the other hand, causes the string to be treated as if it's multi-line.

It seems that .*? can't cross the newline character when using the m flag: 

# doesn't match
my ($span_m) = $str =~ /(\d\d.*?\d\d)/m;

# matches
my ($span_m) = $str =~ /(\d\d.*?\n.*?\d\d)/m;

# so does
my ($span_m) = $str =~ /(\d\d\w+\s\w+\d\d/m;

[download]
Treating the \n as whitespace (or explicitly naming it in the regex) seems to solve the problem. Any ideas why that'd be the case?

-- Tanalis
#include www.liquidfusion.org.uk

In reply to Re^3: Passing variables into regular expressions by Tanalis
in thread Passing variables into regular expressions by wanderer

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.