Question

I have a file where every block is separated by !s. i.e

!
 vserver XXXX
 virtual XX.xx.XX.XX tcp 389
 owner LDAP
 serverfarm XXX
 idle 5
 persistent rebalance
 inservice
!

I want to get each section that is contains vserver info. I am trying to use regex in python, but I am having trouble dealing with the newline char

I tried something like this:

pattern = r"!\n vserver \S+\n "

Answer 1

You need to tell Python that you’re using multi-line regular expressions and that dot characters can match new-lines:

>>> m = re.search('^!.*^!', text, re.MULTILINE | re.DOTALL)
>>> m.group(0)
'!\n vserver XXXX\n virtual XX.xx.XX.XX tcp 389\n owner LDAP\n serverfarm XXX\n idle 5\n persistent rebalance\n inservice\n!'

If you want to get the name of the vserver:

>>> m = re.search('^!.*vserver\s+(\w+).*^!', text, re.MULTILINE | re.DOTALL)
>>> m.group(0)
'!\n vserver XXXX\n virtual XX.xx.XX.XX tcp 389\n owner LDAP\n serverfarm XXX\n idle 5\n persistent rebalance\n inservice\n!'
>>> m.group(1)
'XXXX'