Kennethk, there's no output after running your code

Now let me clarify myself; I have a file with tons of lines, but there're many lines that I want to join in one and I found that I can match the start with "remotely" and the end with "p_agrs", so the lines that are in the middle would be in the one which contains "remotely", later I'll drop the rest of them using a grep remotely data01 > data02

I am confused. If I copy the posted file:

EV = 0x10eb250 (class,   event_handle: 3503519, mc_ueid: 1278629168)
20100708 224608.259843 RULES: IMC110203I: #3503519: $EV.m
c_host
20100708 224608.260757 RULES: IMC110801I: #3503519: Rule e
execution starting with
.
.
.
msg='script to be execute remotely:
 exists("TRUSTEDALARM");
Local Id: Rem_010965WAP_18504';
.
.
.
p_agrs
[download]

into the file 'input.txt' and then execute the command

perl -e 'while(<>){chomp; last if /p_agrs/;print if /remotely/}' < input.txt

I get the output

msg='script to be execute remotely:

Is this not consistent with what you observe?

From the discussion I see that I misunderstood your initial posting. But I am as confused as kennethk is.

What I think so far:

• you have a file with a lot of lines
• you want to match several lines and join them into one
• the lines you want to match build a consecutive range (e.g. lines 5-11)
• the range of lines you want to match starts with a line containing the string "remotely"
• the range of lines you want match ends with a line containing the string "p_agrs"

Based upon that, I guessed this code:

#! /usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;


# open file and read from that handle...
while ( <DATA> ) {
    chomp;
    print if m/remotely/ ... m/p_agrs/;
    print $/ if m/p_agrs/;
}

__DATA__
not me
foo remotely
bar01
bar02
bar03
p_agrs
i am not here
foo2 remotely
barbar01
p_agrs
i am out...
[download]

result:

foo remotelybar01bar02bar03p_agrs
foo2 remotelybarbar01p_agrs
[download]

What really isn't clear in the OP is whether you want to keep the lines you don't join in the output or throw those lines away. This isn't even clear from your detailed description, though in your code you throw them away. I assumed the OP wanted to keep those lines and only change the joined lines.