in reply to Tricky Syslog Parsing

This handles it on an entry-by-entry basis:

use warnings; use strict; use Data::Dumper; my %fws = (); my @queue = (); while (<DATA>) { my $line = $_; if ($line =~ /^\d{4}-\d\d-\d\d/) { process_queue(@queue); @queue = (); } push @queue, $line; } process_queue(@queue) if scalar(@queue) > 0; sub process_queue { my @entries = @_; foreach my $entry (@entries) { #the regex below should be modified #to suit your actual needs if ($entry =~ /(%FW-\d-\d{6})/) { my $fw = $1; $fws{$fw} = join('', @queue) unless exists $fws{$fw}; } } } print Dumper(%fws); 1; __DATA__ 2003-12-22 15:48:35 Local4.Error 192.168.1.2 Dec 22 2003 20:48:25: %FW-3-106011: Deny inbound (No xlate) udp 4 dst inside:192.168.18.6/161 2003-12-22 23:52:00 Local4.Critical 192.168.1.2 Dec 23 2003 04:51:50: %FW-2-108002: SMTP replaced >: out 192.168.36.223 in 192.168.11.12 data: MAIL From: <123@hotmail.com>.. 2003-12-22 23:56:00 Local4.Error 192.168.1.2 Dec 22 2003 20:48:25: %FW-3-106011: Insert Worm data: MAIL FROM <foo@bar.com> 2003-12-22 23:57:22 Local4.Oops 192.168.1.2 Dec 22 2003 20:48:25: %FW-3-106011: Deny Involvement (No xlate) udp 4 dst inside:192.168.18.6/161 2003-12-22 23:58:33 Local4.Critical 192.168.1.2 Dec 23 2003 04:51:50: %FW-2-108002: SMTP blow'd up out 192.168.36.223 in 192.168.11.12 data: MAIL From: <spammy.spammington@spam.net>..
Hanlon's Razor - "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity"