Hi Monks! I have a file which i read and extract information from it, the file contents is as follows: 

DATA    Numbers five; Crystal; Reliable chromo; Onion; Apple;
            Salt.
CHEM      Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 substr. Kazusa
  NAMES  Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 substr. Kazusa
            Bacteria; Cyanobacteria; Synechococcales; Merismopediaceae
+;
            Synechocystis; unclassified Synechocystis.

[download]

I am extracting only DATA and its corresponding values. For this i wrote the following program.

    open(FH, "/Users/Desktop/file.txt") or die; 
my $content = join("", <FH>); 
close(FH);
my @matches = $content =~ /DATA\s+([A-Za-z\W]+)\n/g;
 print "Data:@matches\n";

[download]

Now everything works file but i want to use a subroutine for this task, where the subroutine takes as input argument the content of the file and returns all data (DATA) from the file. In the return argument only the DATA should be included and nothing else.

How can i achieve this? any inputs will be appreciated a lot :)

In reply to Function for reading file by shabird

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.