Hi charlie_pi

you can try like this,

use strict;

local $/;#####To read the whole content of a file
while(<DATA>){
    while($_=~/\(\!-- #BeginEditable \"([^"]*)" --\)(.*?)\(\!-- #EndEd
+itable --\)/sgi){
        print "IN:$1:$2\n";
        ##do your stuffs here
    }
}
[download]

Punitha

Punitha, you are a magician. I have made a donation to Perl Monks Foundation in your name, and I pledge also to study the regex you've written so that I can pass it on. Thank you for your timely help! Charlie Pi

   #!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;

my $sw;

while (<DATA>) {
        if ($_ =~ /BeginEditable/) {$sw="on";}
        elsif ($_ =~ /EndEditable/) {$sw="off";}
        elsif ($sw eq "on") {print "$_"}
}

__DATA__
psycho
alpha                      
(!_-%BeginEditable$$)      nb. the "html" is irrelevent 
disco
mater
tangle
(^-EndEditables)
glyph

.*? is perfectly legitimate in a Perl regex. Search for "non-greedy" sometime.

Your solution is great if the input actually has the tags in question conveniently on lines by themselves, but breaks otherwise. If you've ever worked with real users, you know that's unlikely unless the input was purely machine generated with that constraint in mind and never touched by the users.

WOW, i'm sure i've never tried .*? in a regex, so if that was supposed to make sense, ignore me

This example should clearly illustrate the difference.

$_ = '<S>abc<E> <S>def<E>';

print("Greedy:\n");     print("  $1\n") while /<S>(.*)<E>/g;
print("Non-greedy:\n"); print("  $1\n") while /<S>(.*?)<E>/g;
[download]

Greedy:
  abc<E> <S>def
Non-greedy:
  abc
  def
[download]

See HTML::TokeParser::Simple