Hi with this code I find all the strings matching in the whole database. what I am looking for is finding the first exact occurence of the string and printing the line under that. e.g 
colours
 red
 blue
 yellow

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I want to search for coulours and have the whole block as a result. thanks 
#!/usr/local/bin/perl

  use strict;
    
  my $file = 'thesaurus';                               # Name the fil
+e
  open(INFO,$file) || die "Cannot open file";           # open the fil
+e or say can't open file                                 # Read it in
+to an array
  print " what are you looking for? ";
  $a = <STDIN>;
  chomp $a;                                             # get rid of a
+ new line 
  while (<INFO>){
      if($file eq "\n"){
        last;
      }
      my @matches = grep {/$a/i} <INFO>;                   # find all 
+the matches
      print "The following matches were found: @matches\n"; # print th
+e matches
  
    }

[download]

In reply to pattern matching by Anonymous Monk

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