If I've understood correctly, you might want to try a look-behind assertion. Also, you can use a quantifier, capture and back-reference for your equals signs. It looks like you need to preserve your first capture as it will be obliterated by subsequent matches. Something like (not tested)

...
my $rxHeader = qr
   {(?x)
       (?: (?<=\A) | (?<=\n) )
       ([=]{2,})
       ([ your big character class ]+)
       \1
   };
...
while ( $post->{ post_message } =~ m{$rxHeader}g )
{
    my $section =
       get_section_code( $2 ,$post->{ post_message } );
    my @subheaders;
    while ( $section =~ m{$rxHeader}g )
    {
        push @subheaders, $2;
        ...
    }
    push @headers, { Section => $section, SubLoop => \@subheaders }
}

[download]

I hope I've understood correctly and this is useful.

Cheers,

JohnGG

Update: Fixed typo, s/behaind/behind/

Update 2: Fixed typo in code, s/{(?x}/{(?x)/

In reply to Re: Regex question - either starts, or has newline prefixing? by johngg
in thread Regex question - either starts, or has newline prefixing? by ultranerds

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