Thanks for the substitution idea!

I removed the "$" and the from the regex since it wouldn't match the data correctly. Also in your example there is no longer a grouping on $1. Here is the fixed code:

my $count = 1;
my $string = "--This is a comment\n--This Comment continues here\nNOT 
+a comment;\n";

print "Original: $string\n";

while ($string =~ s/^--.*\n//m) {
  print "string = $string\ncount=$count\n";
  $count++;
}
print "Final: $string\n";
exit;
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