At Mr. Ceulemans reply, I'd like to show up a different way, without the use of $1:

{
  local $/ = undef;
  my ($foundString) = ( <DATA> =~ /\bbanana\n(.*)\ngrape\n/s );
  print $foundString;
}

__DATA__
apple
banana
pear
peach
grape
orange
[download]

The problem with this code might be multivalued lines (because of \b)... Best regards, Strat