Welcome to the monastary, 4perl. It looks like you have the rough idea in place -- what about the above code doesn't work? Please see How do I post a question effectively?. In particular, please post a chunk of your literal input, wrapped in <code> tags, as well as your expected output. Also, what is in $lines? Did you slurp in the entire file ($/), which is what I'd expect from your code, or are you parsing line-by-line? A little more context would be helpful.