I have some large data sets that have oddly formatted lines, and much of it I don't need. The general rule is that I need to keep every instance of lines that start with "john#", are followed by {2,5}new lines, and then lines starting with "jacob - \d\.0"

bhgfsggdsgsg
--
john1
weruwearnwrnweuarar
jjafdaiuweifweofiuwe
jacob - 1.0
--
nfaslf23523525
john2
asfsjldf43tgre
john3
asbdfhskafbv3333v
sdfahh34ttg
sadfhk34t3wtg
sdfhk3gfwghhw3
jacob - 2.0

[download]

The output that I need would look like this..

john1 > jacob - 1.0
john3 > jacob - 2.0

[download]

Obviously my data is a little different than this, but I have every regex pulling exactly what I need, but just not in the way I want it. I can't seem to figure out how to tell it to take John# only when followed by a Jacob. I don't want to keep a John# unless it is followed by a Jacob. For instance, the code below would look at when there are 3 lines between them...I know it isn't right, but the multi-match, multi-line thing has me confused.

if($line1 =~ /(john)^.{1,100}$^.{1,100}$^.{1,100}$^(jacob \- \d\.0)/s)
{
($JOHN,$JACOB) = ($1,$2);
print MYOUTPUTFILE1 "$JOHN - $JACOB";
}

[download]

In reply to Matching consecutive "different" regex patterns across multiple lines by eh3civic

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