my $begin = shift @ARGV;
my $end = shift @ARGV;
$_=<> until /^$begin$/;
while (<>) {
  last if /^$end$/;
  print;
}
[download]

You can nest reads on an open filehandle. I didn't know
this until looking at your code and playing with it a little;
here's what I got.


#!/usr/bin/perl

$begin='banana';
$end='grape';

while(<DATA>) {
  /$begin/ ? eval { /$end/ ? last : print while (<DATA>) }
           : next
}
 
__DATA__
apple
banana
pear
peach
grape
prange
[download]

blyman

That code produces the warning:

Exiting eval via last at line 8, <DATA> line 5.
[download]

when warnings are turned on.... I'm not entirely sure why 'last'ing out of an eval block is bad, but I do know that eval is overkill for what you've written. do is probably more appropriate. The following code issues no warnings:

#!/usr/bin/perl -wT
use strict;

my $begin='banana';
my $end='grape';

while(<DATA>) {
  /^$begin$/ && do { /^$end$/ ? last : print while (<DATA>) }
}

__DATA__
apple
banana
pear
peach
grape
orange
[download]

Update: You might want to replace the last above with a next if you want multiple windows to print... For instance, it changes what gets printed using this data:

__DATA__
banana
pear
peach
grape
orange
banana
cow
pig
grape
[download]

Notice that 'cow' and 'pig' are between a second set of on/off toggles... last will skip them next will print them. Which is the desired behavior? Your guess is as good as mine.

-Blake