Match everything between two words in Powershell

Question

I have a big text file with SQL query in between blocks of EXEC SQL --- END-EXEC.

I need everything in-between EXEC SQL --- END-EXEC. keywords. Sample Input is below

Answer 1

You need to use a lazy quantifier to make sure that your regex matches each EXEC block individually. And you can gather all matches with a single regex operation:

$regex = [regex] '(?is)(?<=\bEXEC SQL\b).*?(?=\bEND-EXEC\b)'
$allmatches = $regex.Matches($subject);

Explanation:

(?is)         # Case-insensitive matching, dot matches newline
(?<=          # Assert that this matches before the current position:
 \b           # Start of a word
 EXEC\ SQL    # Literal text "EXEC SQL"
 \b           # End of word
)             # End of lookbehind assertion
.*?           # Match any number of characters, as few as possible
(?=           # until it's possible to match the following at the current position:
 \bEND-EXEC\b # the words "END-EXEC"
)             # End of lookahead assertion

Answer 2

Or:

(?<=\*\*EXEC SQL\*\*)[\s\S]*(?=\*\*END-EXEC\*\*)

With multiline mode

Answer 3

$script = Get-Content D:\temp\script.sql

$in = $false

$script | %{
    if ($_.Contains("EXEC SQL"))
        { $in = $true }
    elseif ($_.Contains("END-EXEC"))
        { $in = $false; }
    elseif ($in)
        { Write-Host $_ } # Or Out-File ...
}