Although you have correctly made your regex non-greedy, it "can't get a match" because 1nd (in the regex) does not match 1st (in the data):

my $output = "<!-- 1st table -->What I want 1<!-- /1st table -->more s
+tuff...<!-- 2st movie -->What I want 2<!-- /2st movie -->...more stuf
+f...<!-- 3st movie -->What I want 3<!-- /3st movie -->...more stuff";

if ($output =~ /<!-- 1st table -->(.*?)<!-- \/1st table -->/g) {
    print  $1;
}
else{
    print "Nothing Here!";
}

[download]
cheerfully spits out
perl 23.pl
What I want 1
However
  1. Your /g isn't doing what your think. You've tried to specify a single set of tags. /g will find the content between them if they're repeated, but it won't find "2st sic movie
  2. Your pseudo-html makes no sense: tables without rows or data cells?
  3. Using LWP or similar, if you're not, could save you the trouble of saving the source data as a text file
  4. It's a tad peculiar to name the input FH in your code as "OUTPUT"
  5. and, if you're going to parse html, use a module. There are just too many ways to go wrong while rolling your own.

In reply to Re: Pattern Search on HTML source. by ww
in thread Pattern Search on HTML source. by Anonymous Monk

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