Thanks so much for your quick reply. Sorry it took me so long to get back. I had made a few mistakes, and it doesn't take much to screw up a RegEx. I put in a bit more detail, like capturing the fucntion name and parameters. A bit more screaming at it until a slash turned into a backslash, and it finally worked.

use strict;
undef $/;

while (<DATA>) {
print;
/
  (                               #Start capture
   (                              #Start Sub descript header
    '-{20,}                       #start '------ delimiter
    (\n'[^\n]*?)+\n               #middle of header
    '-{20,}\n                     #end '------ delimiter
   )?                             #End Sub header (optional)
   (Private\s|Public\s|Friend\s)? #Scope (optional)
   (Static\s)?                    #Static (optional)
   (Sub\s|Function\s)             #Sub or Function (mandatory)
   (\w+)                          #Sub name
   (                              #Start Params
    \(                            #Left paren
    ([^\)])*                      #Optional params inside
    \)                            #Right paren
   )?                             #End Params (optional)
   \s+                            #Space
  ((?!Lib\s))                     #no Lib on line
  ([^\n]+)                        #more stuff on same line unless "Lib
+"
   (.*)                           #and the rest of the file
  )                               #End capture
/sx;
};

__DATA__
Private thingy as String
Private Declare Function DeleteFile Lib "kernel32" Alias "DeleteFileA"

'-----------------------------------------------------------
' This is a header
'-----------------------------------------------------------
Private Function foo(byVal x as Long, byVal y as String) as Integer

[download]

It correctly ignores the first three lines and starts capturing at the '-----------. Thanks!

In reply to Re^2: lookahead, lookbehind, ... I'm lost by ExReg
in thread lookahead, lookbehind, ... I'm lost by ExReg

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