From: Mike Stok <mike@...>
Date: 2002-12-18T02:46:31+09:00
Subject: Re: Multirow slicing

In article <06DC40326E25F44682B5FDD8918423034A55AC@uranium.il.kangaroo.net>, Roman Rytov wrote:
> Here is a multirow string
> 
> Str = 
> 
> 
> String11 abc string12
> String21 string22 ABC
> String31 ABC String32
> 
> I need to get all text between "abc" and "ABC". Both cases are
> interesting: to the first occurrence of ABC and to the second.
> So the results would be 
> 
> 
> 1.     abc string12
> 	 String21 string22 ABC
> 
> 
> 2.     abc string12
> 	 String21 string22 ABC
> 	 String31 ABC

Have you looked at the m modifier for Regexps?

[mike@ratdog mike]$ irb
irb(main):001:0> str = '
irb(main):002:0' 
irb(main):003:0' String11 abc string12
irb(main):004:0' String21 string22 ABC
irb(main):005:0' String31 ABC String32
irb(main):006:0' '
=> "\n\nString11 abc string12\nString21 string22 ABC\nString31 ABC String32\n"
irb(main):007:0> str =~ /(abc.*?ABC)/ && $1
=> nil
irb(main):008:0> str =~ /(abc.*?ABC)/m && $1
=> "abc string12\nString21 string22 ABC"
irb(main):009:0> str =~ /(abc.*ABC)/m && $1
=> "abc string12\nString21 string22 ABC\nString31 ABC"

Note that in step 7 the m modifier wasn't used so . doesn't match \n.

The difference between .* and .*? is that the first will match as much as
possible while still allowing the overall match to succeed, the second
will match as little as possible (non-greedy)

Hope this helps,

Mike

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