Grep -- How to match segment containing many lines

[Klaus Major]

Hi Swami,

> I want to replace a chunk many files
>
> <div id="linklist">
> # lots of other stuff here, many lines all inconsistent
> across many files##
> </html>
>
> <div id="linklist">(.*?)</html>
>
> <div id="linklist">(.*)</html>
>
> isn't working... I suspect because of the many lines
> issue and I am having trouble finding the answer to
> how to get grep to ignore line endings?
>
> I'm sure it's really simple, but even after looking thru
> BBEdit's grep help I can't find it.

Good ol' Ken Ray once posted a code snippet that even iI could  
understand and
I use it now all the time for extracting values from XML like files:

function getXMLdata theData, what
   get matchText(theData,"(?s)<" & what & ">(.*?)</" & what &  
">",retValue)
   return retValue
end getXMLdata

This does only wok with fixed TAG names like:

-> theData = <oneTag>this and that and again this and that</oneTag>
-> get getXMLData theDAta,"oneTag"

Will return: his and that and again this and that

Maybe you can adapt this to your needs?
Like getting the desired string this way and then replace it with  
another string?

You could change it this way two support two different TAGs

function getXMLdata theData, TagOne,TagTwo
   get matchText(theData,"(?s)<" & TagOne & ">(.*?)</" & TagTwo &  
">",retValue)
   return retValue
end getXMLdata

Not tested, just an idea...

> TIA
>
> Sivakatirswami
> www.himalayanacademy.com

Regards

Klaus Major
klaus at major-k.de
http://www.major-k.de