Your first code is ($line =~ /abc/) .. /xyz/. You mean to write ($line =~ /abc/) .. ($line =~ /xyz/). Case closed.
Jeff japhy Pinyan,
P.L., P.M., P.O.D, X.S.:
Perl,
regex,
and perlhacker How can we ever be the sold short or the cheated, we who for every service have long ago been overpaid? ~~ Meister Eckhart