in reply to 3 capture multi line regex

This code will help you do the job you want: 
#!usr/bin/perl

my $html = <<'HTML';
<li><a class="style5" href="http://www.site.com/page.html">
 some words here</a>
- <a class="style3" href="http://www.site.com/page2.html">
"some words here"</a> 
</li>
HTML

my $regex = qr{
   <a
       \s+
       class\s*=\s*"style5"
       \s+
       href\s*=\s*[\"\'] [^\"\']+ [\"\']\s*>        #first href (not c
+aptured)
           \s*([^<>]+?)\s*                 #text inside first <a></a> 
+(captured)
       </a>\s*
       -\s*
   <a
       \s+
       class\s*=\s*"style3"
       \s+
       href\s*=\s*[\"\'] ([^\"\']+) [\"\']\s*>      #second href (not 
+captured)
           \s*([^<>]+?)\s*                 #text inside second <a></a>
+ (captured)
       </a>
}xi;

$html =~ /$regex/;
print join "\n", $1, $2, $3, "";

[download]
Just modify the style names in the qr'ed regex and use it.

But if you want something more than a one-time solution for a very certain case, it'll be better to study HTML parsing modules mentioned in the comment above.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: 3 capture multi line regex
by Anonymous Monk on Jun 30, 2006 at 18:23 UTC
    Can you explain what these two lines are doing? Like what is the 2nd part in the first line doing? and how about the <> in the 2nd line? 
           href=[\"\'] ([^\"\']+) [\"\']>      #second href (not captured)
           \s*([^<>]+?)\s*                 #text inside second <a></a>

    [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
      i modified the regex a bit (i found a bug there), so two lines you mentioned become 
             href\s*=\s*[\"\'] [^\"\']+ [\"\']\s*>        #first href (not c
+aptured)
           \s*([^<>]+?)\s*                 #text inside first <a></a> 
+(captured)

      [download]
      At first line, i find a href= string followed by quotes (single or doble — ["']) containing string free of quoting symbols (i used a negated character class: [^"'] means NOT ["']).
      At the next line i simply find a text without tags within. If you think there will be another tags within your link, it would be better to use 
                \s*(.+?)\s*  # non-greedy capturing of everything  till the 
+next </a>

      [download]
      instead.
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
        Hi.

        Your regex matched fine the first time but I need to put all occurences into an array. I can't get the array to hold anything now 

        push (@results, "$1::$2::$3"), $result_content =~ m/$regex/;

        [download]
        I tried adding /g to the end but it doesn't contain anything at all. I tried adding /g to the regex itself but it errors out.

        What am I doign wrong?

[reply]
[d/l]

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