If file size is a concern, just keep the recent lines in an array instead of slurping up everything. I just threw this thing together but it seems to do the trick:

use strict;

my $fileglob  = shift || '*.pl';
my $pattern   = shift || 'hello';
my $keeplines = shift || 3;

for my $file (<${fileglob}>) { 
  unless(open(IN, $file)) { warn "Can't read from $file: $!"; next; }
  my @lines;
  while(<IN>) { 
    push @lines, $_;
    shift @lines if(@lines > $keeplines);
    if(/$pattern/i) {
      print "--- From $file:---\n@lines\n"
    }
  }
}
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I'd like to be able to assign to an luser