Nobody answered after 16 min? Oh, graff did (and was faster than me) ;-)

 ...
 my ($fiop, $length, $data)
    = $string =~ m{<file                 # tag anchor
                   \s+ fiop="([^"]+)"    # (foo)
                   \s+ length="([^"]+)"  # (bar)
                   />                    # end: start file tag
                   \s* (.*?)             # (baz) - note the "nongreedy
+ness" .*?
                   </file>               # end: file tag
                  }x;

 print "$fiop, $length, $data\n";
 ...

[download]

Addendum: forgot the tag-cleaning part:

 
  ...
 (my $notags = $string) =~ s{<file.+?</file>}{};
  print "$notags\n";
  ...

[download]

Your mistake was basically to take the "greedy modifier" (.*), which matches until the end of the string - and backtracks then - and matches from the rear ...

Regards

mwa

In reply to Re: extracting a substring from a string - multiple variables by mwah
in thread extracting a substring from a string - multiple variables by walinsky

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