in reply to Re^4: Negating a regexp
in thread Negating a regexp

That looks like XML. I'd seriously consider using XML::Twig!

If you need some help show us some representative data and what you actually want to extract

DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^6: Negating a regexp
by jxh (Acolyte) on Feb 01, 2006 at 10:42 UTC
    It is of a fashion - impossibly malformed XML. The data now given above ( and specified output ) is now fully representative, this tool is effectivley a parser to take some poor output, to poor, but well-formed XML. Although Im keen to continue with this approach, is the solution on a differant approach ?
[reply]

      Actually that is a lot simpler to solve assuming one "element" per line:

      use warnings;
use strict;

while (my $line = <DATA>) {
  # Assume one "element" per line
  if ($line =~ /<(\w+)>(.*?)<\/\1>/) {
    (my $midstr = $2) =~ tr/<>/[]/;
    $line = "<$1>$midstr</$1>\n";
  }
  print $line;
}

__DATA__

<sometag> my data here </sometag>
<anothertag> further text </anothertag>
<furthertag> not good as contains <this> in angle brackets </furtherta
+g>
<byetag> another possibility is <more> <than> one <angle pairs> in her
+e </byetag>

      [download]

      Prints:

      
<sometag> my data here </sometag>
<anothertag> further text </anothertag>
<furthertag> not good as contains [this] in angle brackets </furtherta
+g>
<byetag> another possibility is [more] [than] one [angle pairs] in her
+e </byetag>

      [download]
      DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
        Typically it can cover more than one line, however I can easily modify your example myself to accomodate this. In terms of looking to achieve this with a single substitution command, I think this isnt the approach to take - a little code as per your example is the way to handle it. Many thanks for the options explored throughout.
[reply]

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom