Post a few lines of sample data, a few lines of code, and then maybe we'll have something to go by. Have you gotten far enough along in perlre to learn that in a regular expression, \d matches a number, and [\dA-Fa-f] or [[:xdigit:]] would match a hex digit.

I would also recommend taking a step back, and start with a script that just reads the data and prints it. Then add something that prints the data only if it has some part of what you're looking for. Then keep restricting it until you get only what you're looking for.

Any code is better than no code. A small self contained demo script with input data, output expected output along with a description of how actual output and expected output differ is ideal. For a few ideas about how such a script can be put together see I know what I mean. Why don't you? - the very first sample script there seems likely to be a good starting point for you.

Also always use strictures (use strict; use warnings; - see The strictures, according to Seuss). Really and truly they will save you heaps of time you could spend lounging around in the sun.

In fact is not Greek, is Grep to you ;-)

If all you're looking for is specific text like "ccParty" and "Port", couldn't you just grep from the command line?

# grep ccParty filename_goes_here | grep Port | grep DTMF
[download]

is probably the simplest way to find the three pieces of text in the same line of a file.

NOTE: If you're on Windows, just replace "grep" with "find" and put double-quotes around the search stings "ccParty", "Port" and "DTMF".

This is the first step in something much bigger that's probably way more than i can chew. Thank you for all the replies so far.

Here are a few lines of data:

2011-12-21 00:24:20.422318%%0f-1f-15%%TRF%% Received event <lmevtPORT_
+DIGIT_PATTERN_MATCH> cc<lmccSTATE_CHANGED> R<otLIF_PORT:0x4E06016> D<
+otPARTY_OBJECT:0x80B4D> T<otUNKNOWN:0x0> SRC<otLIF_PORT:0x4E06016> Ad
+dr<01-15-0c>
2011-12-21 00:24:20.422888%%0f-1f-16%%TRF%% Received event <paevDIGIT_
+PATTERN_RECEIVED> cc<0x0> R<otPARTY_OBJECT:0x80B4D> D<otCC_PARTY_OBJE
+CT:0x31A9A> T<otUNKNOWN:0x0> SRC<otPARTY_OBJECT:0x80B4D> Addr
2011-12-21 00:24:20.423024%%0f-1f-16%%DB1%% ccParty<0x31A9A> Port<1-14
+-7-23> DTMF<4>
2011-12-21 00:24:20.423138%%0f-1f-16%%DB2%% ccParty<0x31A9A> next CF<2
+1>
2011-12-21 00:24:20.423229%%0f-1f-16%%DB2%% ccParty<0x31A9A> CF<21> I<
+0>
[download]

my $slurp;
    local $/ = undef;
    open my $textfile, '<', 'filename.txt' or die $!;
    $slurp = <$textfile>;
    close $textfile;
}

while($line = m/ccParty<(.+)> DTMF<(.+)>/)
  print "$line" if $line =~ /_NN/;
}
[download]

my $slurp;
{
local $/ = undef;
open my $textfile, '<', 'filename.txt' or die $!;
$slurp = <$textfile>;
close $textfile;
}
[download]

The above code is unnecessary. It is syntactically correct if you want to read an entire file into a single scalar variable ($slurp), but then your code needs to use this variable, which it doesn't.

Far better to do this:

open my $textfile, '<', 'filename.txt' or die $!;
while ( my $line = <$textfile> )
{
  ## Do something with $line
}
[download]

Update: Do you see how much better formated my post looks than yours? That's because I followed the guidelines, wrapping code (and data) in <c>...</c> tags and paragraphs of text in <p>...</p> tags.

There's nothing stopping you from going back and correcting your posts now...

Update: Corrected minor tpyos.

A few things:
• It's easier to process the file line by line.
• = is assignment, something you don't want when matching.
• The text of the file is in $slurp, which you then never use.
I'd do something like (untested, but complete program):

@ARGV = "filename.txt";
while (<>) {
    print if /ccParty<.+>DTMF<.+>/ && /_NN/;
}
[download]

Or rather, forget about Perl, and just use a shell one liner (again, untested):

$ grep 'ccParty<..*>DTMF<..*>' filename.txt | grep _NN
[download]

I am assuming your regexp is indeed what you want, I haven't checked whether it matches your description.

Your last four lines have several problems

The showstoper? "=" is an assignment. You're looking for "=~"

And once you get your regex right, you can combine the ideas behind your while and print lines, like this:

if ( $line =~ /(regex)/ ) {
      print "$line\n";
} else {
      print "whoops. no match!\n";
[download]

And this may be my bad (for eyes being shot?) but what the heck is your

if $line =~ /_NN/;

supposed to be doing for you? I don't see that string anywhere in your data.

Update: Fixed markup & typos -- thanks to GrandFather for his attention and advice.

It looks like you pasted together a couple bits of code that do something similar to what you're trying to do, but together they don't actually work, and they're really not what you want anyway. You could do this task by slurping the entire file into a single string and then stepping through it by using a //g regex in a while test, but it'd look more like this:

while($huge_multi_line_string =~ /ccParty<(\S+)> Port<(\S+)> DTMF<(\S+
+)>/g){
  # do something with $1, $2, and $3
}
[download]

But don't do that, because that's an ugly way to do it, especially with large files, since it means pulling the whole file into memory. You don't want to do that unless it's necessary, and it's not in your case. Start by thinking through your problem, and how you'd solve it logically, before getting into the code. Write pseudo-code if you have to. You've got a bunch of lines, and you want to pick out the lines that contain certain strings. So your logic will be:

open the file
while there are more lines, get a line
  if the line matches certain strings
    do something with it
close the file
[download]

Then it's just a matter of turning it into code. In perl, "while there are more lines, get a line" is normally done by using <angle brackets> around a filehandle in a while test. This returns one line from the filehandle to a scalar variable, or to $_ if you didn't specify a variable. Then within your while loop, you can use a regex (or regexes) to see if your line matches your requirements. A little time spent reading about using a while loop to read a file line-by-line, and some more time spent in perlretut, and you should be close, at least.

Aaron B.
My Woefully Neglected Blog, where I occasionally mention Perl.

First, thank you, everyone, for your tips, suggestions, etc.

I'm getting extremely frustrated which isn't helping solve anything. Here's my latest bit of code.

{
 open my $textfile, '<', 'C:\Users\msmolik\Desktop\PERL test stuff\tes
+tfile.log' or die $!;
   
 while ( my $line =~ m/ccParty<(.+)> DTMF<(.+)>/ ) {
  print "$line\n"; 
}
}
{
  close $textfile;
  }
[download]

This returns nothing:

C:\Users\msmolik\Desktop\PERL test stuff>testingperl.pl

C:\Users\msmolik\Desktop\PERL test stuff>
[download]

I've shortened my data file to 5 lines which contains 2 lines (the first and last) that "should" match my search. My data file contains the following lines:

2011-12-21 00:23:06.904520%%0f-1f-16%%DB1%% ccParty<0x31A99> Port<1-14
+-7-22> DTMF<4>
2011-12-21 00:21:57.729881%%0f-1f-15%%TRF%% Received event <lmevtVOICE
+_PATH_MODE_CHANGE> cc<lmccSTATE_CHANGED> R<otLIF_PORT:0x4107003> D<ot
+PARTY_OBJECT:0x80B4B> T<otUNKNOWN:0x0> SRC<otLIF_PORT:0x4107003> Addr
+<01-15-0c>
2011-12-21 00:23:06.904667%%0f-1f-16%%DB2%% ccParty<0x31A99> next CF<2
+1>
2011-12-21 00:23:06.904765%%0f-1f-16%%DB2%% ccParty<0x31A99> CF<21> I<
+0>
2011-12-21 00:24:20.423024%%0f-1f-16%%DB1%% ccParty<0x31A9A> Port<1-14
+-7-23> DTMF<4>
[download]

At this point I'm done. I have to take a timeout or I'll just leave this endeavor because I'm so frustrated.

use strict;
use warnings;

while (<DATA>) {
    if (m/ccParty<(.*?)> Port<(.*?)> DTMF<(.*?)>/) {
        print "Matched values $1 $2 $3\n";
        print;
    }
}

__DATA__
2011-12-21 00:24:20.422318%%0f-1f-15%%TRF%% Received event <lmevtPORT_
+DIGIT_PATTERN_MATCH> cc<lmccSTATE_CHANGED> R<otLIF_PORT:0x4E06016> D<
+otPARTY_OBJECT:0x80B4D> T<otUNKNOWN:0x0> SRC<otLIF_PORT:0x4E06016> Ad
+dr<01-15-0c>
2011-12-21 00:24:20.422888%%0f-1f-16%%TRF%% Received event <paevDIGIT_
+PATTERN_RECEIVED> cc<0x0> R<otPARTY_OBJECT:0x80B4D> D<otCC_PARTY_OBJE
+CT:0x31A9A> T<otUNKNOWN:0x0> SRC<otPARTY_OBJECT:0x80B4D> Addr<01-15-1
+5>
2011-12-21 00:24:20.423024%%0f-1f-16%%DB1%% ccParty<0x31A9A> Port<1-14
+-7-23> DTMF<4>
2011-12-21 00:24:20.423138%%0f-1f-16%%DB2%% ccParty<0x31A9A> next CF<2
+1>
2011-12-21 00:24:20.423229%%0f-1f-16%%DB2%% ccParty<0x31A9A> CF<21> I<
+0>
[download]