Need to pull substring between two escape sequences.

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

I need to pull a substring between two escape sequences, I have an escape sequence such as (and only and example) !#HEADER#! and i need to match the beginning !# pull the HEADER into a string and stop at #! but continue searching the string for more !# sequences.

Comment on Need to pull substring between two escape sequences.

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Re: Need to pull substring between two escape sequences. by Ovid (Cardinal) on Mar 30, 2001 at 17:07 UTC
Be careful about using something like this: `my @matches = ($string =~ /!#(.?)#!/g);` [download] That will probably not work the way you want it to on the following: `"123!#45!#678#!90"` [download] You probably wanted `678`, but you get `45!#678` instead. Try something like the following: `my @matches = ($string =~ /!#((?:[^#!]\|#(?!!)))#!/g );` [download] See this node for details on this.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Need to pull substring between two escape sequences. by indigo (Scribe) on Mar 30, 2001 at 05:41 UTC
Assuming your string isn't perverse (like having an escaped '#!' as part of the string literal): `my @matches = ($string =~ /!#(.?)#!/g);` The .? insures non-greedy matching and the /g applies it across the entire string. The params "capture" your string, and a list of all matching strings will be returned.	[reply] [d/l]