Perhaps something like this is what you need
my @entries; my $entry; my $start_parsing = 0; while(<DATA>){ if(/\d-\d\d-ABC\d\d/){ push(@entries, $entry) if(defined $entry); $entry = ''; $start_parsing = 1; } next unless($start_parsing); $entry .= $_; } push(@entries, $entry) if(length($entry) > 0); #Last entry my $i = 0; foreach(@entries){ print "Entry #$i:\n$_\n"; $i++; } __DATA__ 1-11-ABC22 (12:12) ABC 12 Foo Bar Foo Bar Foo Bar Foo Bar 2-15-ABC33 (12:12) ABC 12 Foo Bar Foo Bar Foo Bar Foo Bar -- 1-11-ABC33 (12:12) ABC 12 Foo Bar Foo Bar Foo bar Foo Bar -- 1-11-ABC33 (12:12) ABC 12 Foo Bar Foo Bar Foo abr Foo bar Foo Bar Foo Bar Foo Bar -- 2-15-ABC45 (12:12) ABC 12 Foo Bar Foo Bar Foo Bar Foo Bar 3-33-ABC15 (12:12) ABC 12 Foo Bar Foo Bar

-----------------------

Output is
Entry #0: 1-11-ABC22 (12:12) ABC 12 Foo Bar Foo Bar Foo Bar Foo Bar Entry #1: 2-15-ABC33 (12:12) ABC 12 Foo Bar Foo Bar Foo Bar Foo Bar -- Entry #2: 1-11-ABC33 (12:12) ABC 12 Foo Bar Foo Bar Foo bar Foo Bar -- Entry #3: 1-11-ABC33 (12:12) ABC 12 Foo Bar Foo Bar Foo abr Foo bar Foo Bar Foo Bar Foo Bar -- Entry #4: 2-15-ABC45 (12:12) ABC 12 Foo Bar Foo Bar Foo Bar Foo Bar Entry #5: 3-33-ABC15 (12:12) ABC 12 Foo Bar Foo Bar
Update: Took into account leading lines to be ignored.

- Tom


In reply to Re: Help Parsing a Text File by tcf22
in thread Help Parsing a Text File by PrimeLord

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.