dear monks, i have a need to grab repeating blocks of slightly variating data but within non-variating begin and end delimiters. Here is an example: 

# contents of file:
!
blah
!
blah
blah
!
# start to grab section here with start (/interface/)
interface GigabitEthernet1/1/2
 description PC Trunk
 switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q
 switchport trunk native vlan 100
 switchport mode trunk
 queue-set 2
 priority-queue out 
 mls qos trust dscp
 storm-control broadcast level 1.00
 storm-control multicast level 1.00
 spanning-tree guard loop
 channel-protocol lacp
 channel-group 1 mode active
! 
# ^ end section with (/!/)
# ignore entire block of data when after (/interface/) a (/shutdown/) 
+is seen before (/!/)"
interface GigabitEthernet1/1/3
 shutdown
!
interface GigabitEthernet1/1/4
 shutdown
!
interface TenGigabitEthernet1/1/1
!
interface TenGigabitEthernet1/1/2

#*** Begin of sad attempt PL ***

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
#
use strict;
use warnings;

my $CONFIGFILE = $ARGV[0];
print "$CONFIGFILE\n";

open(FILE, $CONFIGFILE) || die "file not found\n";

while (<FILE>)
        {
        if ($_ =~/^interface/../shutdown/)
                {
                next;
                }
        if ($_ =~/^interface/../!/)
                {
                print $_;
                }
        }

[download]

sadly the above produces no output. Can you help please? Thank you - GT

In reply to Parsing out mulitiple blocks of interesting data in files / ignoring other contents by GeorgMN

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