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

Hi,

I'm trying to do a regex like this:

if ($summary =~ /\Q[[$article_name]]\E(.*)([^[]+)/s) {

Basically, I have a string: 

my $summary_test = q|[sommaire France]
[[France]]
[[Cities of France]]
== Paris
blabla
== Bordeau
blabla
=== Hotels in Bordeaux
blabla
[[Things to see in France]]
[[Things to do in France]]
[/sommaire]|;

[download]


As a test (example), what I want to do - is match:

[Cities of France]
...all content, up to the next [[

The above regex kinda works, appart from it grabs ALL the content, to the end of the string (and not the [[ bit)

I'm a little new with the [^[] format - so I expect its something stupid Im doing wrong.

Any pointers would be much appreciated :)

TIA

Andy

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Regex to catch UP TO a particular string?
by Ratazong (Monsignor) on Mar 24, 2010 at 14:23 UTC
    Try not being greedy (and using .*? instead of .*) : 
    if ($summary_test =~ /\Q[[$article_name]]\E(.*?)\[\[/s) 
{
    print $1;
}

    [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
      Thanks, that doesn't seem to get any results though :/ 
          my @tags;
    my $i = 0;
    my @split = split /\n/, $summary;
    foreach (@split) {

        my $contents;
    
        if ($_ !~ /^\s*\t*\[\[(.*)\]\]/) { next; }
        
        print qq|Tag is: $1 \n|;
        
        my $article_name = $1;
    
        if (/\Q[[$article_name]]\E(.*?)\[\[/s) { 
            print "got content: $1 \n";
            $contents = $1;
        }
        
        push @tags, { name => $article_name, contents => $contents }; 
+       
    }
use Data::Dumper;
print Dumper(@tags);

      [download]

      ..gives: 
      $VAR1 = {
          'contents' => undef,
          'name' => 'France'
        };
$VAR2 = {
          'contents' => undef,
          'name' => 'Cities of France'
        };
$VAR3 = {
          'contents' => undef,
          'name' => 'Things to see in France'
        };
$VAR4 = {
          'contents' => undef,
          'name' => 'Things to do in France'
        };

      [download]
      ..any ideas?

      TIA!

      Andy
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]

        In your second post, you split your summary into lines

           my @split = split /\n/, $summary;

        [download]

        However your expected result contains multiple lines. The regex matches the beginning of the next line starting with [[ - and as the [[ occurs in the first column, that match is empty.

        Try to work on your original data, not the line-by-line-version, e.g. by replacing

        if (/\Q[[$article_name]]\E(.*?)\[\[/s) {

        with

        if ($summary =~ /\Q[[$article_name]]\E(.*?)\[\[/s  {
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
        Never mind - was me being stupid ;) (loooong day)

        if ($summary =~ /\Q[[$article_name]]\E(.*?)\[\[/s) {

        Thanks :)

        Cheers
[reply]
[d/l]

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