Depending on the way your files-which-need-to-be-read-four-lines-at-a-time (henceforward, "fwn") are formatted/organized and the consistency thereof, you might consider setting your $/ record separator...

for ex, if data looks like:

name
date
bill

name1
date1
bill1

...

[download]

then setting local $/="\n\n" will tell Perl that you want to read a paragraph from the fwn, where paragraph is defined as something ending in two consecutive newlines. Better yet, the special case, $/="" defines para somewhat more broadly and may be suitable to deal with your data.

You'll find many examples here, if you merely SuperSearch for $/

In reply to Re: Reading files n lines a time by ww
in thread Reading files n lines a time by naturalsciences

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