well i tried that, but it matched for some reason the beginning of the paragraph to the first newline char. say for instance i have:

firstline
secondline
data_hereDATA

the pattern "data_here" goes into $temp, and $needed_data is actually "DATA";
if i wanted "DATA" but didnt know "DATA" was going to be "DATA" and could have been "abc" or "a1dhiud76", the regex i posted above (which i will need to go back and explain further in detail now that i think about it) will match everything AFTER "data_here" until new line char... which returns "DATA" or any other values/characters to $needed_data. im trying to do that without having to spend that extra variable.

the solution given earlier wont work for some reason tho undef does. correction what corion said did indeed work. i was still trying to split for some reason. after removing the "split" from the function it works. thanks

In reply to Re^2: split paragraph by james28909
in thread split paragraph by james28909

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