Click here to get back home

FAQ 6.3 How can I pull out lines between two patterns that are themselves on different lines?

 HomeNewsGroups | Search | About
 comp.lang.perl.misc    Post an article   get this group's latest topics as an RSS feed add this group's latest topics to your My MSN content add this group's latest topics to your My Yahoo content
Subject Author Date
FAQ 6.3 How can I pull out lines between two patterns that are themselves on different lines? PerlFAQ Server 03-17-2008
Posted by PerlFAQ Server on March 17, 2008, 9:03 am
Please log in for more thread options
This is an excerpt from the latest version perlfaq6.pod, which
comes with the standard Perl distribution. These postings aim to
reduce the number of repeated questions as well as allow the community
to review and update the answers. The latest version of the complete
perlfaq is at http://faq.perl.org .

--------------------------------------------------------------------

6.3: How can I pull out lines between two patterns that are themselves on
different lines?


You can use Perl's somewhat exotic ".." operator (documented in perlop):

perl -ne 'print if /START/ .. /END/' file1 file2 ...

If you wanted text and not lines, you would use

perl -0777 -ne 'print "$1\n" while /START(.*?)END/gs' file1 file2 ...

But if you want nested occurrences of "START" through "END", you'll run
up against the problem described in the question in this section on
matching balanced text.

Here's another example of using "..":

while (<>) {
$in_header = 1 .. /^$/;
$in_body = /^$/ .. eof;
# now choose between them
} continue {
$. = 0 if eof; # fix $.
}



--------------------------------------------------------------------

The perlfaq-workers, a group of volunteers, maintain the perlfaq. They
are not necessarily experts in every domain where Perl might show up,
so please include as much information as possible and relevant in any
corrections. The perlfaq-workers also don't have access to every
operating system or platform, so please include relevant details for
corrections to examples that do not work on particular platforms.
Working code is greatly appreciated.

If you'd like to help maintain the perlfaq, see the details in
perlfaq.pod.

Similar ThreadsPosted
FAQ 6.3 How can I pull out lines between two patterns that are themselves on different lines? January 27, 2005, 12:03 am
FAQ 6.3 How can I pull out lines between two patterns that are themselves on different lines? May 14, 2005, 5:03 am
FAQ 6.3 How can I pull out lines between two patterns that are themselves on different lines? July 29, 2005, 10:03 pm
FAQ 6.3 How can I pull out lines between two patterns that are themselves on different lines? September 26, 2005, 10:03 pm
FAQ 6.3 How can I pull out lines between two patterns that are themselves on different lines? December 9, 2005, 5:03 am
FAQ 6.3 How can I pull out lines between two patterns that are themselves on different lines? January 29, 2006, 6:03 pm
FAQ 6.3 How can I pull out lines between two patterns that are themselves on different lines? February 18, 2006, 6:03 am
FAQ 6.3 How can I pull out lines between two patterns that are themselves on different lines? April 29, 2006, 3:03 pm
FAQ 6.3 How can I pull out lines between two patterns that are themselves on different lines? August 27, 2006, 9:03 am
FAQ 6.3 How can I pull out lines between two patterns that are themselves on different lines? November 20, 2006, 9:03 pm

Our other projects:

Art Dolls, Fairies and Mermaids - Sunnyfaces.net

Roy's Linux, Programming and Search Engines messages

1-Script XML SitemapXML Sitemap