in reply to Help to slurp records - $/ maybe?

$/='Field 1:  ' should work, but it doesn't do what you want: $/ is the end-of-line string, which means that with your data the strings will contain:
Update: first line was wrong:
"Field 1:",
"abc
Field 2:  asdfasdf
Field 2:  asdfasdfase
Field 2:  aaa
Field 3:  ss
Field 1:  ",
"def
Field 2:  abc123
Field 3:  blah
Field 1:  ",
"asdfa"

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You probably want 
while(<FILE>) {
   next unless /^Field 1/;
   # ...
}

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To skip everything but Field 1 lines 
-- 
Joost       downtime n. The period during which a system
            is error-free and immune from user input.

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Re: Re: Help to slurp records - $/ maybe?
by Limbic~Region (Chancellor) on May 02, 2003 at 13:48 UTC
    Joost,
    I can see how this would work - if you know what the data is you are losing, once you slurp it in you just prepend it back on before processing it.

    I am not sure I want to go this route, but I will keep it in my tool box. I am always looking for neat ways to do things.

    Cheers - L~R

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      Well, you're not losing any data (with the $/ trick, that is). The value of the $/ variable is also put at the end of the read 'line'.

      If you want to lose that data, use chomp(), it will remove your current line-terminator.

      The only actual problem is matching the first line. 

      -- 
Joost       downtime n. The period during which a system
            is error-free and immune from user input.

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[d/l]
[select]
        Since chomp returns the chomped value you could even do something like 
        $next_line = chomp($cur_line) . $next_line;

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        But I think that's starting to smell like a really dirty hack.

        Makeshifts last the longest.

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[d/l]

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