grab 2 blocks of texts from file

[Anonymous Monk]

Hi perl geniuses :p I'm trying to grab 2 "sections" of text from a file, i use a marker to tell the program where to begin and end at each section.. here is my attempt.

@text1 = ();
@Section = split("\n", $filedata);
foreach (@Section) {

   if (/^#begin/ .. /^#end/) {
      $eval .= "$_\n";
   }
   if (/^#begin2/ .. /^#end2/) {
      push(@text1, $_);
  }

} 

@arrBlock = ();
for ($x=1;$x<@text1-1;$x++) {
push(@arrBlock,$text1[$x]);
}

this seems valid, i can print $arryBlock[index] but i cant do a foreac
+h loop through it? here is  an example file:

#begin
aaa
bbb
ccc
ddd
#end

#begin2
xxx
ccc
bbb
#end2

now text1 contains the first block of content and arrblock contains the second.. i know i suck at variable names heh

[temporal]

Your code doesn't do what you've specified. Maybe you didn't post all of it?

It builds a string into the $eval variable containing the first block of text from your file (including your markers).

It then pushes the lines from the second block (including your markers) into @text1.

Then it copies @text1 minus your markers over to @arrBlock.

So in the end, @arrBlock contains your second block and @text1 contains your second block with the markers...

It would probably be more efficient to do an array slice:

@firstblock = @text1[1..($#text1-1)];
# remember the left index of the slice can never be greater than the r
+ight... no -1

Not sure what you mean by not being able to do a foreach loop through it:

foreach $value (@arrBlock) {
   print "$value\n";
}

[graff]

Since you seem to be slurping the entire content of the data file into a scalar variable, it might be easier just to use regex matches on that one big string:

if ( $filedata =~ /#begin\n (.*?) #end\n .*? #begin2\n (.*?) #end2/sx 
+) {
    ( $block1, $block2 ) = ( $1, $2 );
    @arr_block1 = split /\n/, $block1;
    @arr_block2 = split /\n/, $block2;
}

Recall from your studies of perlre that the "s" modifier allows the "." wildcard to match new-lines as well as all other characters, and "x" allows for using spaces in the regex for legibility (not for matching literal spaces).

I chose to match both blocks with one regex, but you could do each block as a separate regex match if you want.

[Kenosis]

I like graff's suggestion of using the s modifier in your regex if the file's slurped into $filedata. Given that, here's another solution to grabbing those two sections, and it then places them into an array of arrays @arrBlocks (where $arrBlocks[0] is an array of the first block's elements and $arrBlocks[1] is an array of the second block's elements):

for($filedata =~ /#begin\d*?\n(.*?)#end\d*?\n/gs) {
    push @arrBlocks, [split "\n"];
}

The regex matches your pattern and can be used for endless #begin/#end pairs that end with digits (e.g., #begin3/#end3, ...). If you started with #begin0/#end0, then $arrBlocks[0] would contain that block's elements.

Hope this helps!