in reply to Delete in a range of Dates

Well... The easiest way is to just use grep, no need for perl:

grep -v ^\*\*\*\*2005 filename

This will print out all lines which don't start with ****2005.

The perl equivalent would be the loop:

while(<>) { print unless /^\*\*\*\*2005/; }
but, again, not much point to the extra typing unless you need something extra that grep won't do for you.