Finding multiple matches between delimiters

[schickeneder]

I am having trouble figuring out how to get perl to do what I want it to. I'm sure there's a simple solution, but after looking through forums and tutorials I can't seem to find it.

Given this text:
storeAddresses[!5793!] = {!street1! : !#333 Carr #14, Cotto Laurel!,

I want to extract elements between the '!'s, in other words I want to be able to parse the above string and get variables containing: 5793,street1,#333 Carr #14, Cotto Laurel

Here's what I've been working with but I don't understand perl expressions well enough to get it:

$_ = "storeAddresses[!5793!] = {!street1! : !#333 Carr #14, Cotto Laurel!,";
$_ =~ /!(.*?)!(.*?)!(.*)!(.*)!/;

Then they should be in $1,$2,$3 etc...

any tips?

 

[PinkeyNBrain]

You're RE could probably use a tune up, but if your incoming text is stable, the split() command may get you there faster.

 @arr = split(/\!/, "storeAddresses[!5793!] = {!street1! : !#333 Carr #14, Cotto Laurel!,");

Will result in the following split

$arr[0] = 'storeAddresses[';
$arr[1] = '5793' ;
$arr[2] = '] = {' ;
$arr[3] = 'street1' ;
$arr[4] = ' : ' ;
$arr[5] = '#333 Carr #14, Cotto Laurel' ;
$arr[6] = ',"';

From there you can work with elements 1, 3, and 5. Note that the pattern is all odd entries - so should there be additional !'s in your incoming data, they'll break out into the next 'odd' valued @arr entry.

In the split expresion, the leading \ in front of the ! (i.e. /\!/) is probably not necessary, but if you're new to perl's REs, that leading backslash is telling the parser to not put any special intrepretation on the character.

 

[tsuji]

[tt]my @m;
@m=$_=~m/!(.*?)!/g;[/tt]