To do this I read the lines into an array. If your file is very large this might not be feasible. The adjustment to $lineNo is because arrays are zero-based and I'm assuming you number your lines from 1.

use strict;
use warnings;

use List::Util q{first};
use Data::Dumper;

open my $inFH, q{<}, \ <<EOD or die qq{open: $!\n};
 1:gash line
 2:phrase4
 3:akjdakj
 4:fwefkwe
 5:phrase5
 6:phrase1
 7:adsfwfw
 8:phrase3
 9:phrase5
10:jkjd wsekjw wiu
11:phrase2
12:wewefwefwf
13:another line
14:dsjwjk
15:adsfwfw
16:phrase3
17:another line
18:adsfwfw
19:phrase5
20:phrase6
21:ertgerher
EOD

my @lines = <$inFH>;
close $inFH or die qq{close: $!\n};

my @phrases = map { qq{phrase$_} } 1 .. 6;
my $cumulativeOffset = 0;
foreach my $phrase ( @phrases )
{
    my $rxPhrase = qr{$phrase};
    my $lineNo =
      first { $lines[ $_ ] =~ $rxPhrase } 0 .. $#lines;

    unless ( defined $lineNo )
    {
        print qq{$phrase: not found in sequence\n};
        next;
    }

    $lineNo ++;
    $cumulativeOffset += $lineNo;

    print qq{$phrase: $cumulativeOffset\n};
    splice @lines, 0, $lineNo;
}
[download]

The output.

phrase1: 6
phrase2: 11
phrase3: 16
phrase4: not found in sequence
phrase5: 19
phrase6: 20
[download]

I hope I have guessed right and this is of use.

Cheers,

JohnGG

thats great John... thanks a lot ....
u almost got my question...
but a few ellaborations of my posting,

1. the file should not be inside the program, its read with the given location as in my program.

2. the file doesnt contain the line number.

3. we dont know the exact number of arguments which will be passed. (in ur program 1..6)

4. Phrase 1, Phrase 2... was jus an example, it could be anything. for eg:

total Laptops produced: 60
total mice produced: 40
total cpu sold : 57
total printers produced: 98
total monitors produced: 10

.......................

phrases like these could be present any number of times in the file. but our function should search in the order the phrases are passed.

actually the phrase passed will be like, for eg "total cpu sold :" but it shud return the whole line, cuz the value 57 is important.

to give u clear idea...
the file " test.txt" contains:

total Laptops produced: 60
total cpu sold : 57
total mice produced: 40
total cpu sold : 45
total Laptops produced: 68
total mice produced: 48
total cpu sold : 51
total printers produced: 19
total monitors produced: 149

-------

for eg: this is given


$a= "total Laptops produced:";
$b ="total mice produced:";
$c = "total cpu produced:";

&search_phrase($filename, $a, $b, $c);

this function shud return 45.

i thank u again for ur support...

To take your points in order:
1. I put the file inside the script to keep everything together. Another way of doing this would be to place the data at the end of the script after a __END__ or __DATA__ tag and read the DATA filehandle that the interpreter opens for you. However, I wanted to show you how to use the three-argument form of open which is considered best practice these days. Just substitute your variable containing your file to be read for the \ <<EOD ...

2. I just put the line numbers in the data to show that the script was giving the "right" answers. Having them there did not affect how the script ran.

3. Put something like my ( $file, @phrases ) = @ARGV; at the top of your script so that you don't have to worry how many phrases are being sought.

4. If you are calling your script from the command line with a file and a series of phrases then I imagine you will enclose each phrase in single-quotes. To avoid the problem where the phrase might contain regex metacharacters change the line compiling the regex to my $rxPhrase = qr{\Q$phrase\E};

I'm not sure how you arrive at an answer of 45; did you mean to say $c = "total cpu sold:"?

Cheers,

JohnGG

 
First Occurence:
Line number:3
[download]

What is the significance of "90" in your output?

Another observation: you declare $file_name, but never use it.

#!/usr/bin/perl 
use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

my $p = [ q{total Laptops produced:}, 
          q{total mice produced:} ];

sub search_phrase {
    my $total;
    $total->{ lc( (split)[1] ) } = undef for @{ $_[0] };

    my $i = 1;
    map {
        my ( $item, $count ) = (split)[ 1, 3 ];
        $item = lc $item;
        push @{ $total->{$item} }, $i . q{:} . $count
          if exists $total->{$item};
        $i++;  
    } <DATA>;

    return $total;
}

print Dumper search_phrase($p);

__DATA__
total Laptops produced: 60
total cpu sold: 57
total mice produced: 40
total cpu sold: 45
total Laptops produced: 68
total mice produced: 48
total cpu sold: 51
total printers produced: 19
total monitors produced: 149
[download]

Output:
$VAR1 = {
          'mice' => [
                      '3:40',
                      '6:48'
                    ],
          'laptops' => [
                         '1:60',
                         '5:68'
                       ]
        };
[download]