If your file is small enough (i.e., not many megabytes in size), slurping the whole thing and using a regexp will be efficient enough, and allow you to capture multiple groups, if necessary, without matching unbalanced asterisks.

$_ = do { local $/; <> };
print "Match: $_" for /^\*+$ (.+?) ^\*+$/smxg;

[download]

Full example after the <readmore>.

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use 5.012;
use warnings;
use strict;

$_ = do { local $/; <DATA> };
print "Match: $_" for /^\*+$ (.+?) ^\*+$/smxg;

__DATA__
Here's a text file

**********************************
You want the stuff in between the
asterisks, which is this sentence.
**********************************

**********************************
You probably want this too
**********************************

But not this

**********************************
Or this either

[download]

Output:

Match:
You want the stuff in between the
asterisks, which is this sentence.
Match:
You probably want this too

[download]

In reply to Re: Read Between the Lines by rjt
in thread Read Between the Lines by SuzuBell

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