If 'some code #2' is very small or can be packaged into a single function call, I might go with that. Or I might just make it obvious that we only want/expect this once in the one loop:
my $got_alpha; while (<FILE>) { unless ($got_alpha) { if (/alpha/) { #...alpha code $got_alpha++; next; } } # ...more code }
Update: And I just noticed the part in the OP where it says "without a flag variable"...oh, well...

In reply to Re^2: A way to avoid repeated conditional loops by runrig
in thread A way to avoid repeated conditional loops by Deus Ex

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