Your failure to specify exactly what you mean (are the words on lines by themselves as delimiting lines? can they be anywhere? do you want to include the delimiting words/lines?) means I can freely assume you meant the following case: The two words are on lines by themselves and you want to include them (and for the present example, the words are START and STOP), and we'll read whatever file was passed on the command line:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my $string = '';
while(<>){
    $string .= $_ if /^START$/ .. /^STOP$/;
}
print $string;
__END__
[download]

If your specs are different you'll have to adjust accordingly (ie, you can strip off the delimiting words easily enough, but if your file has multiple cases of such target regions, you'll get them all in a single string with the above).

Welcome to the Monestary ploaiza.

Here's an approach to your problem, but since you haven't clearly stated what your problem was (with example code, for instance), it might be a complete miss). And moreover it is a quick and dirty hack

open (O, "rules.txt") or die "$!";
my ($wanted_lines);
{
 local $/ = undef; # 'Slurp' mode on
 my $whole_file = <O>;
 close O;
 $whole_file =~ /FirstWord(.+?)LastWord/s;
 $wanted_lines = $1;
}
print $wanted_lines
[download]

Update

danger solution is really neat! forget mine!

Though, while looking at your code, one can see it is not really 'perlish'

Here are a few point that could improve your perl coding style.

• ($_ =~ /^Lot Code/)

  can be replaced by

  (/^Lot Code/)

  as the match is against the $_ anyway.
• your open is surely placed in the wrong spot as it will be called for each lines of your input file. Place it just after the '}'

• for ($j=0; $j < $i; $j++)

  You can use the '..' operator to make things clea(n|r)er:

  for (0 .. $i)

• You could perhaps use a Hash of Hashes instead of a zillion of arrays, with the key being $i:

  my %datas = ( 
     1 => {subject => 'foo', failed => 'bar',},
     2 => {subject => 'baz', failed => 'too',},
  );
  

1. In a string? s/(word1)\n(word2)/$1 $2/g;
2. In an array? Search for lines starting/ending with the combination you want and splice them up. Or just re-use the above:

       @array=<FH>;
       $_=join('', @array);
       s/(word1)\n(word2)/$1 $2/g;
       @array=split(/\n/, $_);
   [download]

3. In a file? See #2

I have a text file which I am parsing and it looks like this:

Subject: Lab Test Log #1946
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2000 10:56:15 -0500 (CDT)
From: JUDY F <judyf@elgiloy.com>
To: HAMPSHIRE - KUR <hampsc@combmet.com>

FAILED HV HRD.
I'LL CONT. TEST @ SHERRY'S
CLAY, UNLESS I HEAR FFM. YOU.
THANKS JUDY

ELP - HAMPSHIRE(21)                                           06-01-00
+  10:54:34
JUDY F TERM # 171     LAB TEST LOG - LAB #1946                       P
+AGE #  1
----------------------------------------------------------------------
+----------
Date In        05-30-00 1:00pm
In Initials    JF
Lab Test Type  Final
Tag #          116014
Customer
In Comments    RTR 10342
               COIL B
----------------------------------------------------------------------
+----------
Status         Non-Conforming
Date Out       06-01-00 10:52am
Out Initials   JF
Lot Code       H88231C
Out Comments   @.0075 T 102538 Y 39121 E 70% HRD.83 HRB
               (*159HV1KG)7RA B 3.48 DL .25 @ S.L.PER
               SUS. IGA /DOES NOT MEET WARD HV HRD.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
+----------
** ORDERS **
----------------------------------------------------------------------
+----------
21 12136-1    COMBINED METALS OF CHICAGO
[download]

I have been able to parse all the information that I want, but I need to get the lines that are between: Out Comments and ---- and I need to concatenate them into a string. In my code I have this...

#!/bin/perl

$delimiter = ",";
$i=0;
while(<>)
{
 chomp;
 ....(parsing of other info)
 ...
 if ($_ =~ /^Lot Code/){
    @lotCode[$i] = $_;
    @lotCode[$i]=~ s/^Lot Code(\s+)(\w+)/$2/e;
    $i++;
    }
open OUTPUT, ">>data.txt";

}
for ($j=0; $j < $i; $j++)
{
  print OUTPUT "@subject[$j];@failed[$j];@monthi[$j]/@dayi[$j]/@yeari[
+$j];@routerval[$j];" .
        "@tag[$j];@montho[$j]/@dayo[$j]/@yearo[$j];@lotCode[$j];@comme
+ntso[$j]\n";
  print "@subject[$j];@failed[$j];@monthi[$j]/@dayi[$j]/@yeari[$j];@ro
+uterval[$j];" .
        "@tag[$j];@montho[$j]/@dayo[$j]/@yearo[$j];@lotCode[$j];@comme
+ntso[$j]\n";
}
[download]

I hope these is clear enough to help me

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker