mhearse has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I'm trying to match multiple lines of text using a regular expression. i.e. 
body:
Here is an example of a
multi-line section of text
that I'm trying to grab.
attachment:

[download]
My code doesn't work: 
if ($line =~ /^body: (.*)^attachment:/mi) { $vars{body} = $1; }

[download]
Can someone offer a solution?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Multiline regex
by haoess (Curate) on Oct 27, 2006 at 18:36 UTC

    If you want to do your matching about the whole string (containing multiple lines), then you want /s (also let the dot meta character match line breaks).

    my ($body) = $line =~ /^body: \n (.*) \n attachment/xsi;

    [download]

    Or you are matching line by line, then you should have a look at the flip-flop operator in perlop.

    # this is from perlop
while (<>) {
    $in_header =   1  .. /^$/;
    $in_body   = /^$/ .. eof;
    if ($in_header) {
        # ...
    } else { # in body
        # ...
    }
}

    [download]

    --Frank

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]

      Also see Flipin good, or a total flop? for a good discussion of the flip-flop operator by Grandfather.



      --chargrill 
      s**lil*;  $*=join'',sort split q**;  s;.*;grr; &&s+(.(.)).+$2$1+; $; =
qq-$_-;s,.*,ahc,;$,.=chop for split q,,,reverse;print for($,,$;,$*,$/)

      [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
Re: Multiline regex
by smokemachine (Hermit) on Nov 08, 2006 at 00:46 UTC
    my ($body) = $line =~ /^body:\s+(.*)\s+^attachment:/msi
[reply]
[d/l]

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