Thanks for the advice. I have changed my strategy to have the look up ignore the line as is as along as it does not match the 4 options listed in the code below but I get a syntax error. As I am still a newbie I am not sure what is wrong with this snippet of code: 

if ( $line !~ m/^2/ ) or
( substr($line, 14, 3) ne '800' ) or
( substr($line, 14, 3) ne '866' ) or
( substr($line, 14, 3) ne '877' ) or
( substr($line, 14, 3) ne '888' ) {

[download]


Thanks again.

In reply to Re^2: Ignoring lines in flat text file by sheasbys
in thread Ignoring lines in flat text file by sheasbys

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