I would still like learn how to implement the between range operator elegantly to handle this type of situation, but in the meantime I've rewritten the program to use a state variable (thanks tadman for the suggestion). TIMTOWTDI: 
use strict;
my @jobs = (
      'file2.txt|CCC|EOCCC',
      'file1.txt|SEGMENT3|EOS3',
      'file3.txt|P333|EOP333'
);

for (@jobs) {
   my ($file, $beg, $end) = split /\|/;
   my $first_line = 1;
   my $state = 0;
   my @lines = ();
   print "Opening file: '$file'\n",
         "   beg:   '$beg'   end:   '$end'\n";
   open (INFILE, "<$file")
      or die "Could not open '$file': $!\n";
   while (<INFILE>) {
      chomp;
      $state = 1 if (/$beg/);
      if ($state) {
         print "   first: '$_'\n\n" if $first_line;
         $first_line = 0;
         push (@lines, $_);
      }
      $state = 0, last if /$end/;
   }
   ## no matching /$end/, so add one
   push (@lines, $end) if $state;
   print "$_\n" for @lines;
   print "-" x 30, "\n\n";
}

[download]

--Jim

In reply to Re: Between-text range operator problem by jlongino
in thread Between-text range operator problem by jlongino

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