Re^2: How to match and transform a multiline pattern?

I think I know what you are saying, but my mental block is with how to get the four lines in the first place. Since these lines are being read one at a time from a file, how would I know when to read more than one? Are you suggesting that I read the whole file in to a single string and do substitutions on the whole thing?

Comment on Re^2: How to match and transform a multiline pattern?

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Re^3: How to match and transform a multiline pattern? by apl (Monsignor) on Apr 20, 2007 at 18:19 UTC
Two thousand lines of text is not a great deal. If you did treat it all as a single string, you could do a single `$a =~ s/p/r/g;`, changing all occurrences of the pattern p to r in buffer a.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^4: How to match and transform a multiline pattern? by nbhatia (Novice) on Apr 20, 2007 at 19:32 UTC
Agreed - 2000 lines is not large at all. I just sucked in the whole file and was able to convert it successfully using $a =~ s/p/r/g;. Thanks so much.	[reply]
Re^5: How to match and transform a multiline pattern? by apl (Monsignor) on Apr 20, 2007 at 20:00 UTC
Congratulations. And here I was about to post this boring screed on a Finite State Automata that would allow you to read one line at a time while learning if you had a four-line statement that was interesting ... 8-)	[reply]