Re: How to split into paragraphs?

[ikegami]

in reply to How to split into paragraphs?

If you're reading from a file, $/ = '' sets paragraph mode.

local $/ = '';
print OUT ("<$_>")
   while <IN>;

Alternatively, here's a solution that works for strings:

$out = join '',
       map { "<$_>" } 
       map { /\G((?:(?!\n\n).)*\n+|.+\z)/sg }
       $in;

[jrw]

Ikegami, see clarification above. I am partitioning based on being able to detect the start of each substring, not based on a separator between substrings.

[jrw]

ikegami: I hadn't thought of using map to generate a list when given only a single input -- that's an interesting idea.

One thing I'm trying to do is avoid repeating the pattern used for detecting the start of each substring. When I try to capture using m//, I end up having to repeat the pattern to stop each match:

/(START_PATTERN.*?)(?!START_PATTERN)/g  

split seems to say what I want: "here is the thing that separates the paragraphs from each other". But then I have to piece the parts back together again (see my original post's code) and I'm trying to avoid that.

[ikegami]

Ah, I see. Well, I've already provided the building blocks, but they are well hidden. Let me expose them.

You need something along the lines of /[^$chars]*/, but instead of negatively matching chars, you want to negatively match a regexp.

The direct equivalent of
/[^$chars]*/
for regexps is
/(?:(?!$re).)*/

In context,

# Input the string.
my $in = do { local $/; <DATA> };

# Must move "pos" on a match.
# Zero-width match won't work.
my $start_pat = qr/^\S+/m;

# Break the input into paragraghs.
my @paras = $in =~ /
   \G
   (
      $start_pat
      (?: (?!$start_pat). )*
   )
/xgs;

# Manipulate the paragraghs.
@paras = map { "<$_>" } @paras;

# Recombine the paragraphs.
my $out = join '', @paras;

# Output the string.
print($out);

__DATA__
abc:
  asdf1
  asdf2

def:
  asdf3

ghi:
  asdf4
  asdf5