A couple of easy options.

If the file is small enough to fit in memory, then you could do something like this:

    my $pattern = "----- blah de blah ----";
    do_whatever($_) foreach split /$pattern/, join '', <> ;
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If you don't want to read the whole thing into memory in one go, you could do something like this:

    {
       local $/ = "----- blah de blah ----";
       while (my $this_section = <>) {
           chomp $this_section;
           do_whatever($this_section);
       }
    }
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andy.