great! =)

> I need to start at the # of each entry and finish at the END

2 possible approaches

1. you change the INPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR to 2 linebreaks $/="\n\n"

Iterating now with  while ( $chunk = <$INPUT>) will give you multiple lines to process in chuncks.

2. you use the flip-flop operator '..' to read all lines between from start till end pattern

 if ( $line =~ /^# \d+ \d+\.\d+$/   ..   $line =~ /^END$/ ) {
     $chunk.=$line; 
 } else {  
     process($chunk) if $chunk;
     $chunk='':
}
[download]

You're free to directly process($line) and to skip the '$chunk'-part completely.

> join the contents of the data into one complete string keeping the ";" separators.

well $chunk is a complete string now, do a regex that substitutes ";\n" with ";"

If you process line-by-line try chomp $line to kill all '\n'

> I need to do this for each occurrence of data which falls between # and END.

You need to get rid of start and end line?

Then substitute them away with patterns given. see s///

Or extend the flip-flop expression and add  and not //

'//' defaults to matching the last successful pattern, in your case first and last line. not excludes them

So I'm curious to see your code and I hope others won't take the fun away! =)

HTH!