To do this you could modify your while loop as follows:

    my $i = 0;

    while (<FILE>) {
        $temp .= $_ unless /$heading_to_print/ and $i++;
    }
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Your code suggests that you want to make the changes "in-place". You could do it all in a one-liner as follows:     perl -i.bak -ne 'print unless /pattern/ and $i++' file Enjoy your vacation. :-)

--
John.