CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regex
Arya
Arya

Reputation: 8965

Regex to match multiple lines

I have the following text

            <h4>Section 1</h4>
            <ul>
                <li><a href="http://link">link text</a></li>
                <li><a href="http://link">link text/a></li>
                <li><a href="http://link">link text</a></li>
                <li><a href="http://link">link text</a></li>
            </ul>
            <h4>Section 2</h4>
            <ul>
                <li><a href="http://link">link text</a></li>
            </ul>
            <h4>Section 3</h4>
            <ul>
                <li><a href="http://link">link text</a></li>
            </ul>

This is the regex I have constructed so far

                    <h4>(.*?)</h4>
                    <ul>
(.*?)
                    </ul>

but it only matches the "Section 2" and "Section 3". How can I make it match all the sections including "Section 1"?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 366

Answers (1)

elixenide
elixenide

Reputation: 44823

It depends on the language you are using (PHP, Perl, etc.), but it will be something like this:

(?s)<h4>(.*?)</h4>\s*<ul>(.*?)</ul>

The (?s) lets . match newline (\n) characters.

For example, in PHP, you can do something like this:

// The regex
$regex = '#(?s)<h4>(.*?)</h4>\s*<ul>(.*?)</ul>#';
// Test data
$data = '<h4>Section 1</h4>
        <ul>
            <li><a href="http://link">link text</a></li>
            <li><a href="http://link">link text/a></li>
            <li><a href="http://link">link text</a></li>
            <li><a href="http://link">link text</a></li>
        </ul>
        <h4>Section 2</h4>
        <ul>
            <li><a href="http://link">link text</a></li>
        </ul>
        <h4>Section 3</h4>
        <ul>
            <li><a href="http://link">link text</a></li>
        </ul>';

// Get all matches
preg_match_all($regex, $data, $matches);

// Just to show the results
ob_start();
var_dump( $matches );
$show_html = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
echo "<pre>".htmlentities($show_html)."</pre>";

Upvotes: 3

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