#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; # https://perlmonks.org/?node_id=11111545 use warnings; my $fh = *DATA; # FIXME to your input file, DATA only used for testing my $lastpattern1; while( <$fh> ) { if( /PATTERN1/ ) { $lastpattern1 = tell($fh) - length $_; } elsif( $lastpattern1 and /PATTERN3/ ) { seek $fh, $lastpattern1, 0; while( <$fh> ) { my $end = s/ (?=PATTERN3)/\n\n/; print; $end and last; } $lastpattern1 = undef; } } __DATA__ PATTERN1 SOME INFO TEXT1 TEXT2 TEXT3 PATTERN2 SOME INFO PATTERN1 SOME INFO TEXT4 TEXT5 TEXT6 PATTERN3 SOME INFO PATTERN1 SOME INFO TEXT1 TEXT2 TEXT3 PATTERN4 SOME INFO PATTERN1 SOME INFO TEXT4 TEXT55 TEXT6 PATTERN3 SOME INFO