Can you show us what you have so far?

I would probably read the file one line at a time, saving them as I go, and when you match what you want, print out what you have already seen (pretty much exactly as OP describes...) :

use warnings;
use strict;

open (my $fh, '<', 'test.txt') || die "Failed to open test input : $!"
+;
my $contents = '';
my $previous = 'Not set';
my $pass = 0;

while (<$fh>){
  my $line = $_;
  if ( $line =~ /^Content:/ && $previous =~ /^Subject:/ ){
    ## if we matched the previous line as a 'Subject' line
    ## and this line is a 'Content' line
    print $contents;
    $pass = 1;
    last;
  }
  
  ## append current line and set previous line
  $contents .= $line;
  $previous = $line;
}
print "No match found.\n" unless $pass;
close $fh || die "Failed to close test file : $!";

[download]

I know this is verbose, but KISS works well for me...

learningperl01 you described in words pretty much exactly as I have done, and broke the problem down into the component parts well, so maybe have a go next time! If you are having problems with regexes, then check out perlre

Update: Disclaimer! Code not tested!

Just a something something...

In reply to Re: Print data after to 1st occurrence matches by BioLion
in thread Print data after to 1st occurrence matches by learningperl01

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