Perl Range operator paradigm

Mon Oct 22 11:05:53 EDT 2001

"Martien Verbruggen" <mgjv at tradingpost.com.au> wrote in message
news:slrn9t84tr.cnu.mgjv at martien.heliotrope.home...
> On Tue, 16 Oct 2001 12:27:26 +0200,
> Laurent Pierron <Laurent.Pierron at loria.fr> wrote:
> > Hello Gurus,
[snip]
> > while (<>) {
> >    if (/<BODY>/ .. /<\/BODY>/) {print; }
> > }
>
> Sorry to barge in, but that iperator, in this context, isn't the range
> operator, but the flip-flop [1]. Without more information, the python
> people here probably won't know what to look for. The way the flip-flop
> works is that the result of the expression A..B becomes true when A is
> true and stays true until B is true, after which the whole cycle can
> start again.
>
[snip]

> Martien Verbruggen

When I need this sort of thing, I usually implement it explicitly, with
a state variable:

import sys

inside = 0
for line in sys.stdin:
    if   line == '<body>\n':  inside = 1
    elif line == '</body>\n': inside = 0

    if inside: print line,

(This will print '<body>' but not '</body>' -- tweak to taste, e.g.
with "continue")

Another version, using nested loops:

from sys import stdin
while 1:
    line = stdin.readline()
    if line == '<body>\n':
        while 1:
            line = stdin.readline()
            if line == '</body>\n': break
            print line,
    elif not line:
        break

A bit more obtuse, perhaps... :)

--
Magnus Lie Hetland
http://hetland.org