Let perl do the dirty work and use the implicit loop options -n ( see perlrun ).

Check out Tim Mahers Minimal Perl if you are a unixy person and want perl scripts to work similar to unix tools. 

/usr/bin/perl -n
BEGIN{
    @ARGV=qw(the files you want to process);
}

push @files, $ARGV and close ARGV if /^pattern/;

END{
    print "matching files @files\n"
}

[download]

In reply to Re: search for a pattern in file without opening the file by codeacrobat
in thread search for a pattern in file without opening the file by Anonymous Monk

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