if you know the number of lines between the starting and ending lines of the block of lines you want to elide, something like this might do the trick: 

my $starting_line    = qr{ ^s [^\n]* \n }xsm;  # starts with an 's'
my $intervening_line = qr{    [^\n]* \n }xsm;  # anything
my $ending_line      = qr{   e [ ] p \n }xsm;  # ends with an 'e p'

my $between = 1;

my $line = do { local $/;  <DATA> };  # slurp all the data

$line =~ s{ $start_line ${intervening_line}{$between} $end_line }
          {}gxsm;

[download]

this outputs: 

Random String
s
foo
e f
blah blah
End of file

[download]

any closer?

In reply to Re: Matching and replacing the minimum string from the tail of the regex by Anonymous Monk
in thread Matching and replacing the minimum string from the tail of the regex by abitkin

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