What, nobody has suggested messing with $/ (the record separator)?

Setting $/ to the |---| line will let you read the records one at a time, without having either to glob the entire file or to buffer the lines.

#!/bin/perl -w
use strict;

$/="|--------------------------------------|\n";
<DATA>;        # skip the first (empty) record before the first |---| 
+line
while( <DATA>)# read an entire record
  { chomp;     # to get rid of the extra \n that would mess up the spl
+it
    my %data= (m/^([^:]*):([^\n]*)$/mg); # get field name (before the 
+:) and text (until the \n) for each line

    # %data now holds the fields and their text, and I prove it:
    while( my( $field, $text)= each %data)
      { print "$field: $text\n"; }
    print "\n";
  }

__DATA__
|--------------------------------------|
Date: today
Request: text here text here text here
Name: Joe Bloggs
Tel: 0123 45677
email: joebloggs@bloggs.com
|--------------------------------------|
Date: Today
Request: text here text here text here
Name: John Smith
Tel: 0123 45677
email: johnsmith@smith.com
|--------------------------------------|

[download]

UpdateOf course the original way to parse the record (%data= split /[:\n]/) breaks if the text includes a : so I replaced it with the regexp.

In reply to Re: processing text from flat file by mirod
in thread processing text from flat file by Anonymous Monk

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.