Question

I’m using ruby and I’m trying to find a way to grab text in between the {start_grab_entries} and {end_grab_entries} like so:

{start_grab_entries}
i want to grab
the text that
you see here in
the middle
{end_grab_entries}

Something like so:

$1 => "i want to grab
       the text that
       you see here in
       the middle"

So far, I tried this as my regular expression:

\{start_grab_entries}(.|\n)*\{end_grab_entries}

However, using $1, that gives me a blank. Do you know what I can do to grab that block of text in between the tags correctly?

Answer 1

There is a better way to allow the dot to match newlines (/m modifier):

regexp = /\{start_grab_entries\}(.*?)\{end_grab_entries\}/m

Also, make the * lazy by appending a ?, or you might match too much if more than one such section occurs in your input.

That said, the reason why you got a blank match is that you repeated the capturing group itself; therefore you only caught the last repetition (in this case, a \n).

It would have “worked” if you had put the capturing group outside of the repetition:

\{start_grab_entries\}((?:.|\n)*)\{end_grab_entries\}`

but, as said above, there is a better way to do that.