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                  Release of version 1.76 of Text::Balanced
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NAME

    Text::Balanced - Extract delimited text sequences from strings.


SUMMARY (see Balanced.pod for full details)

    Text::Balanced::extract_delimited
    
        `extract_delimited' extracts the initial substring of a string
        which is delimited by a user-specified set of single-character
        delimiters, whilst ignoring any backslash-escaped delimiter
        characters.

    Text::Balanced::extract_bracketed
    
        `extract_bracketed' extracts a balanced-bracket-delimited substring
        (using any one (or more) of the user-specified delimiter brackets:
        '(..)', '{..}', '[..]', or '<..>').
    
    Text::Balanced::extract_quotelike
    
        `extract_quotelike' attempts to recognize and extract any one of the
        various Perl quote and quotelike operators (see "perlop(3)"). Embedded
        backslashed delimiters, nested bracket delimiters (for the
        quotelike operators), and trailing modifiers are all correctly handled.
    
    Text::Balanced::extract_codeblock
    
        `extract_codeblock' attempts to recognize and extract a
        balanced bracket-delimited substring which may also contain
        unbalanced brackets inside Perl quotes or quotelike
        operations. That is, `extract_codeblock' is like a combination
        of `extract_bracketed' and `extract_quotelike'.

    Text::Balanced::extract_tagged
    
        `extract_tagged' attempts to recognize and extract a
        substring between two arbitrary "tag" patterns (a start tag
	and an end tag).

    
INSTALLATION

    It's all pure Perl, so just put the .pm file in its appropriate
    local Perl subdirectory.


AUTHOR

    Damian Conway (damian@cs.monash.edu.au)


COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (c) 1997-2000, Damian Conway. All Rights Reserved.
     This module is free software. It may be used, redistributed
     and/or modified under the terms of the Perl Artistic License
          (see http://www.perl.com/perl/misc/Artistic.html)


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CHANGES IN VERSION 1.76


	- IMPORTANT: Now requires 5.005 or better.

	- IMPORTANT: Made extract methods sensitive to the pos()
	  value of the text they are parsing. In other words,
	  all extract subroutines now act like patterns of the form
	  /\G.../gc. See documentation for details.

	- IMPORTANT: Changed semantics of extract_multiple, in line
	  with the above change, and to simplify the semantics to
	  something vaguely predictable. See documentation for details.

	- Added ability to use qr/../'s and raw strings as extractors
	  in extract_multiple. See documentation.

	- Added fourth argument to extract_codeblock to allow
	  outermost brackets to be separately specified. See
	  documentation for details.

	- Reimplemented internals of all extraction subroutines
	  for significant speed-ups (between 100% and 2000%
	  improvement).

	- Fixed nasty bug in extract_variable and extract_codeblock
	  (they were returning prefix as well in scalar context)

	- Allowed read-only strings to be used as arguments in
	  scalar contexts.

	- Renamed delimited_pat to gen-delimited pat (in line with
	  gen_extract_tagged). Old name still works, but is now deprecated.

	- Tweaked all extraction subs so they correctly handle 
	  zero-length prefix matches after another zero-length match.



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AVAILABILITY

Text::Balanced has been uploaded to the CPAN
and is also available from:

	http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~damian/CPAN/Text-Balanced.tar.gz

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