Multiline regex to match config block

Question

I am having some issues trying to match a certain config block (multiple ones) from a file. Below is the block that I\'m trying to extract from the config file:

Answer 1

In case this may still be of value to someone and depending on the actual requirement, the regex in Keith's answer doesn't need to be that complicated. If the user simply wants to output each block the following will suffice:

$fileContent = [io.file]::ReadAllText("c:\file.txt")
$fileContent |
    Select-String '(?smi)ap71xx[^!]+!' -AllMatches |
    %{ $_.Matches } |
    %{ $_.Value }

The regex ap71xx[^!]*! will perform better and the use of .* in a regular expression is not recommended because it can generate unexpected results. The pattern [^!]+! will match any character except the exclamation mark, followed by the exclamation mark.

If the start of the block isn't required in the output, the updated script is:

$fileContent |
    Select-String '(?smi)ap71xx([^!]+!)' -AllMatches |
    %{ $_.Matches } |
    %{ $_.Groups[1] } |
    %{ $_.Value }

Groups[0] contains the whole matched string, Groups[1] will contain the string match within the parentheses in the regex.

If $fileContent isn't required for any further processing, the variable can be eliminated:

[io.file]::ReadAllText("c:\file.txt") |
    Select-String '(?smi)ap71xx([^!]+!)' -AllMatches |
    %{ $_.Matches } |
    %{ $_.Groups[1] } |
    %{ $_.Value }