A|string| B|string| C|string| D|string| #### #!perl -w my ($fs, $cs, $rs, $ec, $ss); setdelimiters('|^~\&'); sub setdelimiters { ($fs, $cs, $rs, $ec, $ss) = map {quotemeta} split //, $_[0]; } use strict; my $buffer=""; my $suppress = 0; my $acct = ""; my @field; my %newblock; my %partofblock; my @accounts = qw(77403 77404 77406 77407 77408 77409 77411 77412 77413 77414 77416 77418); my $infile = 'c:/testfile.txt'; my $outfile = 'c:/idxfile.txt'; open IN, "<$infile" or die "Couldn't open $infile, $!"; open OUT,">$outfile" or die "Couldn't open $outfile, $!"; $newblock{$_} = 1 for qw(MSH); $partofblock{$_} = 1 for qw(EVN PID FT1); while () { if (/^(MSH)(.....)/) { setdelimiters($2); } @field = split /$fs/; if ($newblock{$field[0]}) { processbuffer(); } elsif (!$partofblock{$field[0]}) { print STDERR "Possible error: segment=$field[0] line $.\n"; } if ($field[0] eq "FT1") { foreach $acct (@accounts) { if ($field[8] = $acct ) { $suppress = 1; } } } $buffer .= "$_\n"; } processbuffer(); sub processbuffer { print OUT $buffer unless $suppress; $buffer=""; $suppress = 0; }