Thread:       grep_over_multiple_lines
Message:      00001_0009
From:         "Tom George Samson" <tomgeorgesamson@some.web.address.com>
Text:

Hi Folks,

How do you do a grep over multiple lines in perl?
I have a file that is already read into an array and the array looks 
like this.

sldjflsdfjlskd          (line0)
START_PATTERN lsdjflsd  (line1)
lskdfljsld lkjsldflskd  (line2)
sldjflsjdfsldfjlsjdflj  (line3)
ljsdfsdf END_PATTERN    (line4)

I want to grab the stuff between START_PATTERN and END_PATTERN 
and dump it into a different array.
It can be done in a couple of lines, I'm sure, but How do you do 
with a one liner or some other short way?

I tried to use Text::Balanced qw(extract_tagged) as a different 
way to do this .. but somehow it does not work for me :-(.
Could somebody also point me to some sites where they show examples 
of text manipulating perl modules at work ?

Thank you very much.
Thomas.

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Thread:       grep_over_multiple_lines
Message:      00001_0010
From:         "chcst53" <charley@some.web.address.com>
Text:

--- In perl-beginner@yahoogroups.com, "Tom George Samson" 
<tomgeorgesamson@y...> wrote:
> Hi Folks,
> 
> How do you do a grep over multiple lines in perl?
> I have a file that is already read into an array and the array     
looks like this.
> 
> sldjflsdfjlskd          (line0)
> START_PATTERN lsdjflsd  (line1)
> lskdfljsld lkjsldflskd  (line2)
> sldjflsjdfsldfjlsjdflj  (line3)
> ljsdfsdf END_PATTERN    (line4)
> 
> I want to grab the stuff between START_PATTERN and END_PATTERN 
> and dump it into a different array.
> Thank you very much.
> Thomas.

This will do it, if I understand the problem correctly.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my @a;

while(<DATA>) {
next unless /START_PATTERN/../END_PATTERN/;
push @a, /([a-z]+(?:\s+[a-z]+)*)/;
}
print "$_\n" for @a;

__DATA__
sldjflsdfjlskd
START_PATTERN lsdjflsd
lskdfljsld lkjsldflskd
sldjflsjdfsldfjlsjdflj
ljsdfsdf END_PATTERN

The regular expression captures lowercased text _and_ optional space 
followed by lowercase text, just like in thw sample data you have 
here.

Chris

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