Given the following regex:

$file2 =~ /TABLE\s+70.*?TELEVISION.*?(\d{1,3}\.\d)\D+/s;$P33A23 = $1

I want a way to have the search fail or to stop the search if it
finds "TABLE 71".

Any ideas how I might accomplish this?

perldoc perlre

You'll probably only want to assign to $P33A23 if the match succeeded,
though.

   my $stopit;
   my $file2;
   my $P33A23;

        if ( $file2 =~ /TABLE\s+71/ ) {
                $stopit = 1;
        } else {
                print($file2 . "\n"); # just for testing purposes
                $file2 =~ /TABLE\s+70.*?TELEVISION.*?(\d{1,3}\.\d)\D+/s;
                $P33A23 = $1;
        }
   }

If the numerical "stopping" value is just greater than 70 (and not
necessarily exactly 71), then use the following if-clause instead:

        if ( ($file2 =~ /TABLE\s+(\d\d)/) && $1 > 70 ) {
                $stopit = 1;
        }

Regards,

I'm not sure I understand your entire objective here, but I presume
this line is inside a block such as

  open F, $someFile;
  while <F>
   {last if /TABLE\s+71/; # add this line to short-circuit the search?
    $file2 =~ /TABLE\s+70.*?TELEVISION.*?(\d{1,3}\.\d)\D+/s;
    $P33A23 = $1;
   }

It seems odd to loop though a whole file to store one value. So lets
look at another tact (I havent tested this code, beware it's FRIDAY
and almost beer-thirty)..

  open F, $someFile;

# snag the file file cram it into a scalar, close it to be tidy

  close F;

# now truncate the inputfile at /TABLE\s+71/
  $f =~ s/TABLE\s+71.+$//sm;
  $f =~ s/^.*TABLE\s+70.*?TELEVISION.*?(\d{1,3}\.\d).+$/$1/;

# at this point $f either contains $1, if it matched, or the truncated
file if
# it didn't. There are a few ways to test that, perhaps another regex?

  $f = '' unless $f =~ /^\d{1,3}\.\d$/;

Again I'm not certain this is what you were after, if not please
disregard. However, note that this approach is loop-less, which can be
desirable. Dont forget your old friends Mr "Strict" and Mr warnings
either!

Finally- that variable $P33A23 looks very odd, as if perhaps its
related to some coordinate like (33,23) or something like that? If so,
and you have others with similar names, I recommend a hash for them
like

 my $p = {};
  .
  .
 $p->{23}={};
 $p->{23}{33} = blah blah...

But again, I may be misinterpreting between the lines of your post.

Have a great Perl weekend! Oh wait I forgot the obligatory flame that
the other poster said all contributors give here. Let's see.. *think*
*think*

Ahhh forget it I need a beer!

if($f =~ s/$regex/) {
  <do stuff with $1>

Quite right.. Perhaps the simplest:

$ cat /tmp/bah.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl

$str = "this is a test";
$str =~ /this is a (\w+)/;

print "$1\n" if defined $1;

$str =~ /this is not a (\w+)/;

print "$1\n" if defined $1;

$ perl /tmp/bah.pl
test
test