I'll just latch onto one of your questions:

>Is there an easier way to test and print between two points in a file,

Yes, there is. I tried to explain it in from...to

In your case, I'd recommend you break out of the loop after you're finished with the tool:

  while (<FOO_FILE>){
       if  (/$foo/){
            $that = 1;
       }
       if  (/$bar/){
            last;  # emergency exit from the loop ;-)
       }
       if  ($that){
             print $_;
       }
  }
[download]

You could also seperate it into two loops, one for searching for the tool, one for reading the lines for that tool.

  while (<FOO_FILE>){ 
       last if /$foo/;
       # ignore all lines until we find foo
  }

  while (<FOO_FILE>){
       last if  /$bar/;
       print $_;
       # do something with the lines we find now
  }

  close FOO_FILE;
  # just ignore the rest of the file
[download]

--
Brigitte    'I never met a chocolate I didnt like'    Jellinek
http://www.horus.com/~bjelli/         http://perlwelt.horus.at