Parsing File and Printing Only Certain Lines

[TripleDES]

All,

What's the best way to go about parsing through a file and only writing lines that come after x and stop when y is reached?

 

Example:

-- Begin X --

We are constantly

trying to improve

phpfreaks and these forums

-- End Y --

[corbin]

I would do it with a regular expression.... maybe something like:

 

//edit: this code doesnt work... ;p

 

The output would be the text without the begin x and end y lines.

 

(P.S.  I didn't test that, so if it doesn't work, sorry ;p)

[effigy]

How big is/are the file/files?

[corbin]

Ahh found a regular expression that works!

 

<?php
$content = "-- Begin X --
We are constantly
trying to improve
phpfreaks and these forums
-- End Y --";

$pattern = "/-- Begin ([a-z]+) --(.*)-- End ([a-z]+) --/si";
//$pattern = "/\-\- Begin ([a-z]+) \-\-(.*) \-\- End ([a-z]+) \-\-/si";
preg_match($pattern, $content, $matches);
//echo $matches[1];
echo '<pre>';
print_r($matches);
echo '</pre>';
/*
Output:

Array
(
    [0] => -- Begin X --
We are constantly
trying to improve
phpfreaks and these forums
-- End Y --
    [1] => X
    [2] => 
We are constantly
trying to improve
phpfreaks and these forums

    [3] => Y
)

*/
?>

[TripleDES]

$pattern = "/-- Begin ([a-z]+) --(.*)-- End ([a-z]+) --/si";

 

Wow...that regex is too complicated for me to understand.  Please explain it to me so I can learn.

 

The file is not very big.  It's simply a mime encoded email that I'm trying to parse out the message body (text) so I can forward it via SMS.  If there's a better way to go about it, please enlighten me.

 

X = --mimepart_......

 

body...text...etc....

 

Y = ---