use strict; use warnings; use autodie qw/open close/; ## buffer for holding current text; my $buffer = ''; open (my $fh, '/foo/bar.txt'); while(<$fh>) { ## clear trailing whitespace chomp; if (/\/$/) { ## use regex to see if line ends with a slash ## append to buffer $buffer .= $_; } else { ## it's a single line so just process process($buffer); ## sub elsewhere... ## reset $buffer = ''; } } close $fh;