Hello, I have a working script that searches a file for the existence a simple string and prints some output and creates a file: 
#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
open OUTPUT, ">c:/temp/warning.txt";
open LOGFILE, "shift.txt"
or die "What you talkin bout Willis? ($!)";
while (<LOGFILE>) {
        print "$_\n" if /secret\.html/;
        print OUTPUT "The text you were looking for was found\.";
        last;
}
close OUTPUT;

[download]
I'd like to expand this script
A: to search the same file for when the string "secret.html" does _not_ exist, and
B: to be able to search for a more complex string than "secret.html". Actually, it'll be 4 more complex strings, to be exact, examples of which are:
"imagdata.zip is ready for transfer"
"ConnectDirect Transfer was initiated"
"Imagdata.zip has been renamed to Imagdata_yyyy-mm-dd.zip"
"Finished pruning D:\IP\29509"
 I don't really know how to tell Perl to ignore things like whitespaces and the ":\" in pathnames, etc. And I don't yet really know how to create and use an array, so I don't mind just making a variable for each string, something akin to: 
stringa = '"imagdata.zip is ready for transfer"';
stringb = '"ConnectDirect Transfer was initiated"';, etc.

[download]
Can anyone help me with the syntax? Thanks! Dave

In reply to Search for complex string, and if it doesn't exist... by dkaplowitz

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