Hello there. Let me put in some revised code that I have done:

#!/usr/bin/perl
#Variables
$firewall_log = "/home/jwilliams/firewall.txt";
$my_new_log = "/home/jwilliams/extracted_log";

open(FW_LOG, $firewall_log)
    or die "$firewall_log open() failed: $!";
open(MYNEWFILE, ">>$my_new_log:")
    or die "$my_new_log open() failed: $!";
while ($line = <FW_LOG>) {
    if ($line =~ /kernel Temporarily blocking host/ || $line =~ /block
+ed/) {
    # your line transformations would go here...
    print MYNEWFILE $line;
}
}
close(FW_LOG);
close(MYNEWFILE);
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You are correct. The original reason why it was not working was there was a missing }. Once I placed that in, it was working.

I will add the i behind the trailing / just to make sure. Better to be cautious, than not cautious at all.

As far as the: open(MYNEWFILE, ">>$my_new_log:" is concerned, it was something that was suggested to me. Is it not needed? Do you have other recommendations?<p? Also, when the data is extracted, it somes out kinda clumpy. It is not nice and clean. What I mean is there are spaces between the data as well as spaces between each new line. For example:

data (spaces) data (spaces) data (spaces) data (spaces)

Spaces

New line like above

I was trying to get all the data to be smooth and clean.

Yes, I just picked up the Llama book today. I am planning on also ordering the Programming Perl and Perl Cookbook today as well. The more books, the better.

Thanks for your help. It was great. Hopefully my input will help as well.