Hi. If I get you what you want to do is find a key in a file (in this case on) which has various comma/space delimited values spread over possibly many lines? If you can define where your data must end (as it seems you can from the info you provided) then you basically just cat the lines together eg: (_ are spaces!)

this_is_part_of_the_data__
so_is_this, #not a quote,
me_too.__And_there_are_lots_of_endings
musn't_forget_me!
on Mon______,______Tues__,___
Weds,
#comment
*different comment
Fri
#comment

turns into:
this_is_part_of_the_data__ so_is_this, #not a quote,me_too.__And_there_are_lots_of_endings
musn't_forget_me!
on Mon______,______Tues__,___ Weds, Fri

until you have what can only be the end of a line, in this case one that does not match ,\s*$ Then you see if the beginning matches, then you split out the spaces and comma and use the results as you need.

It was a bit ambiguous if you had lots of sequences like this, each with a different key or not. So I assumed you did.
I take it you come from a c++ background?
:-)

Yves

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use warnings;

my $text=<<'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX';
INPUT FILE =
# comment
# comment
ON Mon, Tues,
Fri,
Sat
# comment
other stuff

EXPECTED OUTPUT =
$on = Mon,Tues,Fri,Sat


XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
my %hash=(on=>undef,
          people=>undef);

my $line="";
#open IN,$0;    # uncomment me and replace the filehandle with
SCAN:while(<DATA>) { # IN and it still works!
   next if /^\s*[*#]/; # line comments begin with * or #
   chomp;
   $line.=$_;          # continue the line
   next if /,\s*$/;    # not done
   my $found;
   KEY:foreach my $key (keys %hash) {
        if (!defined($hash{$key}) && $line=~/^\s*$key\s*/i) {
            $found=$key;
            last KEY;
        }
   }
   next SCAN unless $found;
   $line=~s/^\s*$found\s*//i;
   $hash{$found}=[split(/\s*,\s*/,$line)]; # split away
   $line="";
}

# make printing easier
$"=","; $,=$\="\n";
print "$text--OUTPUT--\n";
$"="','";
foreach my $key (keys %hash) {
    next unless $hash{$key};

    print "#For Key '$key'";
    print "my \@$key=qw('@{$hash{$key}}');\n";
}
print "Hope this helps\n","Yves\n",":-)\n";

__DATA__
# comment
# comment
ON Mon, Tues,
Fri,
Sat
# comment
#INPUT FILE =
## comment
## comment
People Mary,   Bill, Jenny,   Petra  ,  Isolde, Joe
#ON Mon, Tues,
#Fri,
#Sat
## comment
#WISHFUL CODE =
##$infile = "test.txt";
##$linecounter = 0;
##open(INFILE, $infile)  || die "Can't open $infile : $!\n";
##MAIN:while(<INFILE>)
#
##   $linecounter++;
##   printf("File Line %s = %s",$linecounter, $_);
##   if ( /^\*/ || /^\#/ )  # Get rid of useless comments in file.
##   {
##       next MAIN;
##   }
##   chop;
##   if ( /^on/i )
##   {
##      hold_on = "";
##      undef(@junk);
##      @junk = split(' ', $_, 2);
##      $hold_on = $junk[1];
##      $len = length($hold_on) - 1;
##      $last_char = substr($hold_on, $len, 1);
##      while ( $last_char eq "," )
##      {
##         $read_line = readln(<INFILE>);
##         $read_line =~ chop($read_line);
##         $hold_on = "$hold_on$read_line";
##         $len = length($hold_on) - 1;
##         $last_char = substr($hold_on, $len, 1);
##      }
##      $hold_on =~ s/\s//g;
##   }
##   #other code
#
##printf("\$on = %s\n", $on);
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