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From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Using 'split' with multi character expressions
Message-ID: <8203@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 25 May 90 18:45:38 GMT
References: <1933@pyrltd.UUCP>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 23

In article <1933@pyrltd.UUCP> jimmy@pyrltd.UUCP (Jimmy Aitken) writes:
: (Patchlevel 18, runiing under OSx4.4c on a Pyramid)
: 
: I'm trying to read in a file, and split on a delimieter that seperates
: different records.  In the test case below, these are a line of 7 '-'
: signs.  I can split on a simple string, but I want to guard against
: the case where the pattern could be included elsewhere.  In the case
: shown below, it works with the exception that record 2 line 3 is sent
: into a speerate array element.
: 
: I've tried all possible combinations of pattern matching that I can
: think of to specify a unique pattern for split, but tnothing seems to
: work as I expect it.  I would expect that setting $artsep to
: "^-------$" to do what I want, but it does not.  Have I read the
: manual wrong, and if so, can someone point me in the correct direction
: please?

Go ahead and use "^-------$" but set $* to enable multi-line pattern matching.
Otherwise the ^ only matches on the beginning of the string because
the pattern matcher is optimizing on the assumption that your string only
contains one line.

Larry