Extracting a string from an XML file 1

[ahammad]

Hello,

I have an XML file that I need to extract data from. The file has multiple lines, one of which contains the following tag:

<Owner> owner's name goes here </Owner>

I need to be able to extract the owner's name from the XML file. I have never programmed Perl before, but I have a pretty strong background in C/C++ and Java. You're probably wondering why the hell I'm jumping into this with no experience in Perl...it wasn't my choice, really. I just started working for a company and the person in charge of the Perl scripts is no longer here, and I just happened to be the only person free enough to take over the project.

I've been doing some research on regular expressions and I found this code:

if($mystring =~ m/start(.*)end/) {
	print $1;
}

Apparently, this would print everything between the word "start" and "end". Based on this, would the following code work?

if($mystring =~ m/<Owner>(.*)</Owner>/) {
	print $1;
}

I'm thinking that the / in </Owner> would cause problems...how would that be fixed?

Thanks for your help.

 

[travs69]

You should look at one of the XML modules.
Like XML::Simple

http://search.cpan.org/~grantm/XML-Simple-2.18/lib/XML/Simple.pm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Travis - Those Who Say It Cannot Be Done Are Usually Interrupted by Someone Else Doing It; Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions;

 

[eWish]

I answered your question at the other forum you posted your question on. I agree with travs69 you need an XML parser. To many possible problems rolling your own solution.