[ILUG] Perl regex question

[Rory Winston]

Hi,

Is it possible to use Perl to match any number of parentheses using a regex?
For example, if I have an entry like the following:

A = ( abc ( b = def ( c = efg ) ) )
B = (abc)
C = (
	(a = abc) 
	(f = ghi)
    )

..etc. (basically each entry can be split over multiple lines, and have an
arbitrary number of parameters enclosed within parentheses). I would like to
be able to match the beginning of each entry, e.g. parsing the above file
results in 

A
B
C

But I'm not sure how to manage the arbitrary number of ( and ) for each
entry. If I was doing this in C, I could use a pushdown stack to to track
the number of parentheses. Is there an elegant way to do this in Perl? (I've
found more elegant ways to do things in Perl than I ever thought possible
with a single language, but this one has eluded me so far.. :-))

Cheers!

Rory 

--------------------------------------------
Rory Winston,
Developer,
OneLine Team,
TeleWest Communications,
Genesis Business Park,
Albert Drive,
Woking Surrey,
GU21 5RW

mailto: rory.winston at telewest.co.uk
phone:  01483 295 653

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