#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; my $infile = 'infile.txt'; open my $fh,'<',$infile or die "Could not open $infile : $!"; my $lineno = 0; while (<$fh>){ ++$lineno; if (/^ node \s+ (\d+) \s+ \w+ : $ /x){ print "lineno $lineno : $1\n"; } } close $fh; print "$lineno lines read from $infile\n";