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

There are 15+ event titles that I want to capture. The event titles are always written between the words "summary" and "description". I indexed the words summary and description and then began printing out what was between the indexes, however I have been putting the index numbers in manually each time. Is there a way for Perl to automatically go to the next index? (Instead of $My Sum1 and $My Sum2 being specific numbers)

 my $substr = 'SUMMARY';
  my $offset = 0;


  my $result = index($string, $substr, $offset);

  while ($result != -1) {

    print "$result\n";

    $offset = $result + 1;
    $result = index($string, $substr, $offset);}
 
 my $SUM1= "298";
 my $SUM2="877";
  my $length = $SUM2-$SUM1;
  my $fragment =  substr $string, 298, $length;
  print " <$fragment>\n";

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Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Automatic Subsequent Indexing.
by muba (Priest) on Jun 22, 2012 at 15:28 UTC

    Something like this, you mean?

    use strict;
use warnings;

my $offset = 0;     # Where are we in the string?

my $string = do {   # Grab the string.
    local $/;
    <DATA>;
};
my $numResults = 0;

while (1) {
    my $idxSummary = index($string, "SUMMARY", $offset);
    my $result = "";
    if ($idxSummary > -1) {
        $offset = $idxSummary + length("SUMMARY");
        my $idxDescription = index($string, "DESCRIPTION", $offset);
        if ($idxDescription == -1) {
            print "(Data malformed: missing DESCRIPTION line.)\n";
            last;
        }
        my $length = $idxDescription - $offset;
        $result = substr($string, $offset, $length);
        $offset = $idxDescription + length("DESCRIPTION");
        $result =~ s/^\s+|\s+$//g ; # Strip leading and trailing white
+space,
                                    # includng newlines.
        $numResults++;
    } else {
        print "(All done. $numResults result(s) found.)\n";
        last;
    }
    print " <$result>\n";
}

__DATA__
This is bogus data

SUMMARY
Event 1
DESCRIPTION
Lorem ipsum etc etc
This is bogus data

SUMMARY
Event 2
DESCRIPTION
Lorem ipsum
This is bogus data

SUMMARY
The Third Event
DESCRIPTION
Lorem ipsum
This is bogus data

SUMMARY
Event Number Four
DESCRIPTION
Lorem ipsum

    [download]

    It gives this output:

     <Event 1>
 <Event 2>
 <The Third Event>
 <Event Number Four>
(All done. 4 result(s) found.)

    [download]

    Update: Alternatively, if it's not really the indexes you care about, but only capturing those titles, how about this?

    my @results = $string =~ m/SUMMARY\s*(.+?)\s*DESCRIPTION/g;
print map { " <$_>\n"} @results;

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      YOU ARE AMAZING!!! THANKYOU!!
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Re: Automatic Subsequent Indexing.
by Anonymous Monk on Jun 22, 2012 at 15:14 UTC
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