There ar some special values that you can set $/ that give you various useful behaviours.

• $/ = undef puts Perl in "slurp" mode. The next read from a filehandle will read in all of the remaining records in the file.
• $/ = '' puts Perl in "paragraph" mode. In this mode, records are delimited by one or more blank lines.
• Setting $/ to a reference to a number (or a reference to a scalar holding a number) sets the record size to that number. The next read from a filehandle will read in that number of bytes.

Like all Perl special variables, you'll usually want to alter its value localised in a block.

my $text = do { local $/; $text = <FILE> };
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Blessed Be
The Pixel

Thanks for your replies. I believe this was what I was looking for. David

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my $input;

$/ = "\n\n";

$input = <STDIN>;

print "You said:\n$input\n";
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Do you mean "end of field" or "end of record"? If it's end of record then you should look at the $/ variable.

"The first rule of Perl club is you don't talk about Perl club."

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use DBI;
my ($dbh,$sth,@row,$server,$date,$date_closed,$contact,$contact_email,
+$contact_phone,$planned,$event,$resolution);
print "Enter sever name: "; $server=<STDIN>; chomp($server);
print "Enter Date (YYYY/MM/DD): ";$date=<STDIN>;chomp($date);
print "Date Closed(YYYY/MM/DD): ";$date_closed=<STDIN>;chomp($date_clo
+sed);
print "Contact: ";$contact=<STDIN>;chomp($contact);
#print "Contact Email: ";$contact_email=<STDIN>;chomp($contact_email);
print "Contact Phone: ";$contact_phone=<STDIN>;chomp($contact_phone);
print "Planned Event(yes/no): ";$planned=<STDIN>;chomp($planned);
######################################################################
+######
# Define multi-line fields
$/ = "^A";
print "Describe Event:\n";
$event=<STDIN>;chomp($event);
print "\n";
print "Describe Resolution:\n";
$resolution=<STDIN>;chomp($resolution);
######################################################################
+########

$dbh = DBI->connect("dbi:mysql:sirinfo","rca","rcaS7ay0u7")
      or die "Nice try buckaroo\n";

$sth = $dbh->prepare("INSERT INTO rca(server,date,date_closed,
                     contact,contact_phone,planned,event,resolution
                     VALUES('$server','$date','$date_closed','$contact
+','$contact_phone','$planned','$event','$resoluti
on')")
      or die "No cigar\n";

$sth->execute();
$dbh->disconnect();
exit;
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You should *really* be using placeholders with DBI. Really. See Tricks with DBI for links to why. At the least you need to escape your strings. You can also do this which is a shorter idiom when getting input:

chomp(my input = <STDIN>); # get input and remove newline
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cheers

tachyon

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