help with pattern matching

[dipti1]

Hi,

I need to extract the word within < > and </ and > and save it to a variable. For example, <name> and </name>.
The text file has such patterns in it. I need to extract the string from those tags. I used pattern matching as under:
while(my $line1 = <FILE1>){ # for mathing <name>
if($line1 =~ /<\w+>/)
{
$words1[$i] = $1;
print "$1\n";
$i++;
}
}

and

while(my $line2 = <FILE2>){# for </name>
if($line2 =~ /<\w+\/>/)
{
$words2[$j] = $1;
print "$1\n";
$j++;
}
}

But this does not seem to give or print the correct words. I am wrong somewhere. Can anyone help with this regular expression pattern matching ?

Thanks in advance,
Priyanka

 

[KevinADC]

You maybe should review regular expressions and how they work. You need to use capturing parenthesis in your regexps:

while(my $line1 = <FILE1>){ # for mathing <name>
    if($line1 =~ /<[red]([/red]\w+[red])[/red]>/)
    {
        $words1[$i] = $1;
        print "$1\n";
        $i++;
    }
}

------------------------------------------
- Kevin, perl coder unexceptional!

 

[stevexff]

Also, assuming you are reading XML, don't try to do it yourself. Save yourself a world of hurt and use one of the XML parsers available on CPAN instead. XML::Simple might work for simple structures, if not XML:arser with a style of Tree or Stream might do what you need.

Steve

[small]"Every program can be reduced by one instruction, and every program has at least one bug. Therefore, any program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work." (Object:erlDesignPatterns)[/small]