#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; my $y = 'Eclipse'; my $p = 'myfile.gz'; # x will contain the line(s) that contain y my $x = `gzgrep $y $p`; unless ( $x ){ print "could not find exact case, but...\n"; $x = `gzgrep -i $y $p`; } if ($x) { print "found:\n$x\n"; } else { print "nothing found\n"; }