That is a very methodical approach and I will try the approach and post my code once its done. If I understand it correctly, this involves unzipping the file and using a file pointer to remember where I last stopped scanning. Is there any other way of doing it without unzipping the file? I am not averse to using awk/sed but from my limited knowledge, I cant seem to come up with a way of achieving this. The point I am getting struck is remmebering the position of pattern 1. Thats why I thought perl will rescue me with file handlers. But anything with file handlers will impose a limitation on the size of file I am dealing with. Also, I would like to point out that each of pettern 1 and pattern 2 are different.

< name > name 1 < /name >

#unknoen no of lines

< id > unique id1 < /id >

#unknow no of lines

< name > name 2 < /name >

#unknoen no of lines

< id > unique id2 < /id >

In reply to Re^2: Searching a gzip file by baski
in thread Searching a gzip file by baski

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.