From: Nathan Clark <tokenshift@...>
Date: 2010-11-23T05:50:31+09:00
Subject: Re: Matching multiple line reg exp

On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 3:45 PM, w_a_x_man <w_a_x_man@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Nov 22, 2:33 pm, Guillermo Riojas <guillermo.rio...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> Hi there,
>> Trying for a couple of hours (again without success) to create a regular
>> expression that matches a multi-line statement , i found myself here
>> again, asking for help.
>> The case is now:
>>
>> <def>/123/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> <nop>xxxxx
>> <tuv>xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> <wxy>xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>
>> I am unable to match the statements that contains multiple lines.
>> The regexp looks so far like this:
>>
>> /(\<[a-z][a-z][a-z]\>.*?$)/m
>>
>> The question is why is only returning matches until the first end of
>> line?
>> I am sure the greediness of the expression should take him to the last
>> new line character just before the next statement comes, but maybe is
>> just that i need to read a lot more to understand the concept right.
>> In any case, can somebody point me what i am missing to run the scan
>> method and get each match (including the ones with multiple lines)?
>>
>> Thanks a lot.
>>
>> --
>> Posted viahttp://www.ruby-forum.com/.
>
> /^(<[a-z]{3}>[^<]*)/
>
>

In multiline regular expressions in Ruby, the caret and dollar sign
also match newlines in the string, which is why it only read a line at
a time.