in reply to matching everything between over two lines

Here's one way:

use warnings; use strict; local $/ = 'Message dump:'; while (<DATA>) { chomp; print; } __DATA__ Message dump: 1=4 11:13:2006 Message dump: 1=445=3=56=23=67=23=123=12=34 11:13:2006 Message dump:

Prints:

1=4 11:13:2006 1=445=3=56=23=67=23=123=12=34 11:13:2006

Update - that loop was a little verbose. It crunches down to:

chomp, print while <DATA>;

DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel