Struggling with Perl regex: Extracting scenario blocks from text

Question

Im struggling with RegEx but first of all here is my input:

 #
  #------------------------------------------- spaceholder ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
  #

  #@E2E-1 @id:1 
  Scenario: Login & Search: B2B_PKG_IN >> BE
    Given I am on the login page
    When I enter <username> and incorrect password multiple times
    Then I should be locked out of my account
    And I should see a lockout message



  #@E2E-2 @id:32 
  Scenario: Login & Search: B2B_PKG_IN >> NL
    Given I am on the login page
    When I enter <username> and incorrect password multiple times
    Then I should be locked out of my account
    And I should see a lockout message


  #
  #------------------------------------------- B2B_PKG_3PA ---------------------------------------------------------------------------


  #

  @E2E-3 @id:3
  Scenario: Login & Search: B2B_PKG_3PA >> BE
    Given I am on the login page
    When I enter <username> and incorrect password multiple times
    Then I should be locked out of my account
    And I should see a lockout message

and this is the output Im trying to archieve:

 #@E2E-1 @id:1 
  Scenario: Login & Search: B2B_PKG_IN >> BE
    Given I am on the login page
    When I enter <username> and incorrect password multiple times
    Then I should be locked out of my account
    And I should see a lockout message



  #@E2E-2 @id:32 
  Scenario: Login & Search: B2B_PKG_IN >> NL
    Given I am on the login page
    When I enter <username> and incorrect password multiple times
    Then I should be locked out of my account
    And I should see a lockout message



  @E2E-3 @id:3
  Scenario: Login & Search: B2B_PKG_3PA >> BE
    Given I am on the login page
    When I enter <username> and incorrect password multiple times
    Then I should be locked out of my account
    And I should see a lockout message

I tried this Pattern on a RegEx test website and it worked so well:

((@[^\n]+|#@[^\n]+)?\s*)?Scenario:[^\n]*\n(?:[^\n]*\n)*?\n 

yet when I use it in perl it doesnt seem to work at all.

This is how I want to use it inside my Code:

while (my $block = <$initial_fh>) {
        push @scenarios, $block if ($block =~ /$pattern/);
    }

Please help

Answer 1

You could set the input separator, $/, to paragraph mode and then only capture the paragraphs beginning with /^\s*#?@/. You only use your actual filename in the open(... below.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;


my $file =<<'EOF';
#
  #------------------------------------------- spaceholder ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
  #

  #@E2E-1 @id:1 
  Scenario: Login & Search: B2B_PKG_IN >> BE
    Given I am on the login page
    When I enter <username> and incorrect password multiple times
    Then I should be locked out of my account
    And I should see a lockout message



  #@E2E-2 @id:32 
  Scenario: Login & Search: B2B_PKG_IN >> NL
    Given I am on the login page
    When I enter <username> and incorrect password multiple times
    Then I should be locked out of my account
    And I should see a lockout message


  #
  #------------------------------------------- B2B_PKG_3PA ---------------------------------------------------------------------------


  #

  @E2E-3 @id:3
  Scenario: Login & Search: B2B_PKG_3PA >> BE
    Given I am on the login page
    When I enter <username> and incorrect password multiple times
    Then I should be locked out of my account
    And I should see a lockout message
EOF

local $/ = ''; # enable 'paragraph' mode (blocks separated by 2 or more \n)
my @scenarios;

open my $fh, '<', \$file;
while (<$fh>) {
    chomp;
    push (@scenarios, $_) if /^\s*#?@/;
}

print join "\n\n", @scenarios;

Prints:

  #@E2E-1 @id:1
  Scenario: Login & Search: B2B_PKG_IN >> BE
    Given I am on the login page
    When I enter <username> and incorrect password multiple times
    Then I should be locked out of my account
    And I should see a lockout message

  #@E2E-2 @id:32
  Scenario: Login & Search: B2B_PKG_IN >> NL
    Given I am on the login page
    When I enter <username> and incorrect password multiple times
    Then I should be locked out of my account
    And I should see a lockout message

  @E2E-3 @id:3
  Scenario: Login & Search: B2B_PKG_3PA >> BE
    Given I am on the login page
    When I enter <username> and incorrect password multiple times
    Then I should be locked out of my account
    And I should see a lockout message

(NOTE: your code corrected)

!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

open my $initial_fh, '<', "initial_state.txt_formatted";
open my $current_fh, '<', "current_state.txt_formatted";

my @scenarios;

{
    local $/ = ''; # enable 'paragraph' mode (restricted to this block)
    while (<$initial_fh>) {
        chomp;
        push (@scenarios, $_) if /^\s*\#?\@/;
    }
}

print join("\n", @scenarios);

close $initial_fh;
close $current_fh;