That code doesn't do what you say it does. It searches through the file then prints the line after your target line, and every 3rd line after that till the end of the file. The reason is that the inner while loop continues until the file ends. Also the readline doesn't do what you mean for it to do, it actually reads a line from the file (<FILE>) then uses that as a argument to readline. If you had used warnings it would have complained about a readline on unopened filehandle. readline(FILE)is the same as <FILE> and is not restricted to a while loop so where ever you read that is wrong. Here is a way over commented piece of code that does what you say you want :)

use warnings;
use strict;

my $success = 0;

open(FILE, "<", "dumptape.log") 
    or die "Couldn't open dumptape.log: $!";

while (<FILE>) {
  if (/Dump phase number 3/) { # We found the line
    my $line = <FILE>;   # read the next line
    print $line;         # print the next line
    <FILE>;              # Skip a line
    <FILE>;              # Skip a line
    $line = <FILE>;      # read the fourth line
    print $line;         # print the fourth line
    $success = 1;        # we found it
    last;                # So we're done!
  }
}
close FILE;

if (! $success) {
    print "Failed dump log\n";
}
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my $line = <FILE>;   # read the next line
print $line;
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I think these two lines are only needed because you want to provide a scalar context to <FILE>. That can be done easier and more efficiently (and probably more readable as well):

print scalar <FILE>;    # read the next line and print it
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Liz

It seems to me that you could simplify the code like this.

open(FILE,"dumptape.log") ||
  die ("Could not open file: $!");

my $success;
for ( $success = 0; $success != 1 && <FILE>; ) {
  if ( /Dump phase number 3/ ) {
    print <FILE>;
    $success = 1;
  }
}

close ( FILE );
if ( !$success ) {
  print "Failed dump log\n"; 
  #do other failed dump log stuff here
}
[download]

Then again, maybe checking for success every time is overkill -- the last that you had in there works fine.

print <FILE>;

This wont do as you expect it to do. print puts is argument in list context, and a file handle in list context returns all the lines in the files. Thus you would print the remainder of the file after having found your line.

T I M T O W T D I

Cheers!