Just off the top of my head...I would read in the file, and search for the asterisk. When I found it, I would grab the keyword. This would be my hash key, then I would just push the lines onto the hash until I hit my next keyword... 
######untested code
#should be close in theory though

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my $keyword='';
my %file_hash=();
while(<>) {
   chomp;
   next if (/^\;/);
   if ( /\*/) {
         $keyword=(split /\*/)[1];
   }
   if ($keyword ne "END") {
      push @{$file_hash{$keyword}},$_;
   }
}

foreach my $line (@{$file_hash{'DESCRIPTION'})
{
   #do what ever you want with each line that falls in
   # the description block

   print "$line\n";

}

[download]
This is probably not the most elegant way of doing it, but it should get you going down some path or at least give you some suggestions. cheers! krazken

In reply to Re: Search for a BLOCK of text and selectively replace by krazken
in thread Search for a BLOCK of text and selectively replace by Rhodium

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