Reading in multiple lines with regex?

Question

I have a file that looks like this:

SPECIMEN: Procedure: xxxx1 A) Location: yyyy2
Major zzz B) Location: something
text here C) more


CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS: xyz

Where the newlines are CR then LF.

I'm trying to make regex that reads from the end of Procedure: until the start of CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS but having issues reading multiple lines.

Here's what I have:

$input_file = 'c:\Path\0240188.txt'
$regex = ‘(?m)^SPECIMEN: Procedure: (.*)CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS:’
select-string -Path $input_file -Pattern $regex -AllMatches | % { $_.Matches } | % { $_.Value }

Which doesn't return anything.

If I change the line to:

$regex = ‘(?m)^SPECIMEN: Procedure: (.*)’

It grabs the first line, but not the rest. I assumed (?m) was suppose to grab multiple lines for me.

Any tips?

Any way to slurp that whole file into a variable ?

user557597
– user557597

2014-09-11 22:57:39 +00:00
Commented Sep 11, 2014 at 22:57 — user557597
– user557597, Commented Sep 11, 2014 at 22:57

mjolinor · Accepted Answer · 2014-09-11 19:40:50Z

1

Try this:

$regex = '(?ms).*SPECIMEN: Procedure:(.+)CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS: '

Get-Content $input_file -Delimiter 'CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS: '|
 foreach {@($_) -match 'CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS: ' -replace $regex,'$1'}

Using 'Clinical Diagnosis' as a delimiter eliminates the need to read in all the data at once and resolve/capture multiple matches at once.

edited Sep 11, 2014 at 19:40

answered Sep 11, 2014 at 19:34

mjolinor

68.7k7 gold badges118 silver badges141 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Comments

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 11:57:15Z

1

It seems that the $input_file only reads line by line, which doesn't help you here,

Try:

$fileContent = [io.file]::ReadAllText("C:\file.txt")

Or

$fileContent = Get-Content c:\file.txt -Raw

Taken from another post here.

edited May 23, 2017 at 11:57

CommunityBot

11 silver badge

answered Sep 11, 2014 at 19:23

EurikaIam

1369 bronze badges

Comments

hwnd · Accepted Answer · 2014-09-11 20:03:31Z

1

(?m) causes ^ and $ anchors to match the beginning and end of each line when implemented. You want to use the inline (?s) modifier which forces the dot to match all characters, including line breaks.

$regex = ‘(?s)SPECIMEN: Procedure: (.*)CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS:’

edited Sep 11, 2014 at 20:03

answered Sep 11, 2014 at 19:16

hwnd

70.9k4 gold badges100 silver badges135 bronze badges

1 Comment

JBurace Over a year ago

This didn't give me any results. If I took out the CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS: in your line, it only ended up returning SPECIMEN: Procedure: ; the ? seems to be part of the issue causing this?

walid toumi · Accepted Answer · 2014-09-11 19:17:32Z

0

Try with this:

$input_file = gc 'c:\Path\0240188.txt' | out-string
# or: gc c:\path\xxxxx.txt -raw  #with v3+
$regex = ‘(?s)\bSPECIMEN: Procedure: (.*?)CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS:’
$input_file | select-string -Pattern $regex -AllMatches | % { $_.Matches }
# or: [regex]::matches($input_file, $regex) # much faster

answered Sep 11, 2014 at 19:17

walid toumi

2,2901 gold badge15 silver badges10 bronze badges

Comments

Federico Piazza · Accepted Answer · 2014-09-11 20:50:11Z

0

You could use a little regex trick like this:

Procedure:([\S\s]+)CLINICAL DIAGNOSIS

Working demo

enter image description here

Since the . matches everything except new lines you could use [\S\s]+ to match everything as the image shows in green and also captures it using capturing group (...). This trick works if you want to avoid using single line flag.

answered Sep 11, 2014 at 20:50

Federico Piazza

31.2k15 gold badges91 silver badges133 bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Reading in multiple lines with regex?

5 Answers 5

Comments

Comments

1 Comment

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

5 Answers 5

Comments

Comments

1 Comment

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Linked

Related