If you are going to analyze character by character, you probably want the whole file in one string and to find just the offset of your word. The first part is called slurping the file; one method is to set $/ to undef (see perlvar), then read the file with <> or readline; this will read the whole file. If you then match in scalar context using the g flag, the pos of the string will be set to the end of your match. You can then examine nearby characters with substr. I'd provide an example, but it's not clear exactly what you are going to do once you find a match.

In reply to Re: Find a specific word in a text file by ysth
in thread Find a specific word in a text file by algonquin

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