alternatively, if it is known that the intervening line(s) will never begin with some pattern:

my $starter = qr{ s }xsm; # starts with this string my $never = qr{ s }xsm; # never starts with this string my $ender = qr{ e [ ] p }xsm; # ends with this string my $start_line = qr{ ^ $starter [^\n]* \n }xsm; my $intervening_line = qr{ ^ (?! $never ) [^\n]* \n }xsm; my $end_line = qr{ $ender \n }xsm; my $line = do { local $/; <DATA> }; # slurp all the data $line =~ s{ $start_line $intervening_line* $end_line } {}gxsm; print $line; __DATA__ Random String s erartt e p s foo e f blah blah s adflkja wibble wobble e p End of file

output:

Random String s foo e f blah blah End of file

In reply to Re^2: 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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