Extract text from a multiline string using Perl

Question

I have a string that covers several lines. I need to extract the text between two strings. For example:

Start Here Some example
text covering a few
lines. En         


        

Answer 1

Wouldn't the correct modifier to treat the string as a single line be (?s) rather than (/s) ? I've been wrestling with a similar problem for quite a while now and the RegExp Tester embedded in JMeter's View Results Tree listener shows my regular expression extractor with the regex

(?s)<FMSFlightPlan>(.*?)</FMSFlightPlan>

matches

<FMSFlightPlan>
C87D
AN NTEST/GL 
- FPN/FN/RP:DA:GCRR:AA:EIKN:F:SAMAR,N30540W014249.UN873. 
BAROK,N35580W010014..PESUL,N40529W008069..RELVA,N41512W008359.. 
SIVIR,N46000W008450..EMPER,N49000W009000..CON,N53545W008492 
</FMSFlightPlan>

while the regex

(?s)<FMSFlightPlan>(.*?)</FMSFlightPlan>

does not match. Other regex testers show the same result. However when I try to execute a the script I get the Beanshell Assertion error:

Assertion failure message: org.apache.jorphan.util.JMeterException: Error invoking bsh method: eval Sourced file: inline evaluation of: ``import java.io.*; //write out the data results to a file outfile = "/Users/Dani . . . '' Token Parsing Error: Lexical error at line 12, column 380. Encountered: "\n" (10),

So something else is definitely wrong with mine. Anyway, just a suggestion

Answer 2

Use the /s regex modifier to treat the string as a single line:

/s Treat string as single line. That is, change "." to match any character whatsoever, even a newline, which normally it would not match.

  $string =~ /(Start Here.*)End Here/s;
  print $1;

This will capture up to the last End Here, in case it appears more than once in your text.

If this is not what you want, then you can use:

  $string =~ /(Start Here.*?)End Here/s;
  print $1;

This will stop matching at the very first occurrence of End Here.

Answer 3

print $1 if /(Start Here.*?)End Here/s;