use strict;

open IN, "filename" || die "Couldn't open file!";

my $line,$i;
my $n = 5; #how many lines after the **line** to get
my $emailtext = "";

while( chomp($line = <IN>) )
{
   #if line has ** in it, then get next n lines
   if( $line =~ /\*\*/)
   {
      for my $i (1..$n)
      {
         $emailtext .= <IN>;
      }
      #send your email here
   }
}
[download]

HTH
~CS

  if ($_ =~ /^\*\*/)
  {
    for (1..$n) { $mail_msg .= <FH>; }
  }
[download]

With respect to the emailing (if this is part of your problem) have a look at Mail::Mailer or Mail::Sendmail.

-- Hofmator

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
my ($line,$i,$n,$emailtext);

while( $line=<DATA> )
{
        if( $line =~ m/^\*\*$/) {

                $emailtext .= <DATA> if(*DATA);
                next if ( $line =~ m/^\*\*$/ );
        }
}
print "$emailtext\n";   # you could start your print MAIL 
                        # stuff here.
__DATA__

**
She turned me into a newt!
**

One day, a shell shall emerge from the masses, written 
in Perl, and it will be Good.

**
A newt?!
**

The people will rejoice, and it shall be 
dubbed 'SuperShell'.

**
I got better.
**
[download]

Thanks to all of you and apologies for not being clearer. I have a script that makes and builds the distribution for various apps and outputs results as .txt files. What I really need is to extract various results/summaries etc from the output files, strip of characters such as '*' and '-' and, as I'm using a cmd line mailer, set the results/summaries as variables. Again, sorry for not being clearer

hmm can you maybe paste an example of the output file (pre-regex), and if possible, show us how you want the output to appear (post-regex)?
eg: if your file looks like so -


**
- blah blah blah -
**
[download]

and you want it to look like this:


blah blah blah
[download]

then it'd be a very simple fix.

strfry()