#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; sub slurpie { while () { local $/ ; next unless /^\d+/; print "$. $_"; } } slurpie(); __DATA__ hi hi 234 hi hoi sdfsdfsdf23423 hi hi hi 1234 1 [root@myserver tmp]# ./!$ ./././././././././perl_slurp.pl 3 234 12 1234 14 1