use Bio::SeqIO; $in = new Bio::SeqIO -file => 'p122.gel', -format=>'SCF'; $seq = $in->next_seq(); # if you want to look at the various comment field data: while ( ($key, $val) = each %{$seq->names()} ) { print "$key\t$val\n"; } #### SCF Done: E(RHF) = -113.873389817 A.U. after 11 cycles /SCF Done.*=\s?([\-\d\.]*\d+)/ #### SCF Done= -113.873389817. /SCF Done=\s?([\-\d\.]*\d+)/ #### perl -ne '$V{$1}=$ARGV if /SCF Done.*=\s*([\-\d\.]*\d+)/; END{@_=sort keys %V;print "Lowest value is $_[0] in file $V{$_[0]}\n"}' *.log