trying to identify hosts that are members of the CRIT hostgroup, or of the DMZ hostgroup

Ignoring that your text say's that, and your code 'GRID|RMAN', this might set you on your road:

#! perl -slw
use strict;

$/ = ''; ## para model see perldoc -q paragraphs

m[
    (?=^.*(DMZ|CRIT))
    (?=^.*host_name\s+(\S+))
    (?=^.*address\s+(\S+))
]sx and print "$2 [$3] is a member of $1"
    while <DATA>;

__DATA__
[snip... your sample data here]
[download]

Produces:

C:\test>junk
denlas02 [146.xxx.xxx.xxx] is a member of DMZ
ppplas12 [10.50.33.26] is a member of CRIT
[download]

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

my %host_add;
my ( $host, $name );

while (<DATA>) {
    s/^\s+|\s+$//;
    if (/^host_name/) {
        ( $host, $name ) = split /\s+/, $_;
        if ( !exists $host_add{$name} ) {
            undef $host_add{$name};
        }
        else { next }
    }
    elsif ( /^address/ or /^hostgroups/ ) {
        my ( $add, $address ) = split /\s+/, $_;
        push @{ $host_add{$name} }, $address;
    }
}

print Dumper \%host_add;

__DATA__
define host{
   use                                  HALF
   host_name                      denlas02
   alias                                denlas02
   address                           146.xxx.xxx.xxx
   hostgroups                      LINUX,DEN,DMZ
}

define host{
        use                             HALF
        host_name                 ppplas11
        alias                            ppplas11
        address                       10.xxx.xxx.xxx
        hostgroups                 LINUX,PPO,ORAPRD
        }

define host{
        use                               ALIVE
        host_name                   ppplas12
        alias                              ppplas12
        address                        10.50.33.26
        hostgroups                   LINUX,GRID,RMAN,CRIT
        }
[download]

$VAR1 = {
          'denlas02' => [
                          '146.xxx.xxx.xxx',
                          'LINUX,DEN,DMZ'
                        ],
          'ppplas11' => [
                          '10.xxx.xxx.xxx',
                          'LINUX,PPO,ORAPRD'
                        ],
          'ppplas12' => [
                          '10.50.33.26',
                          'LINUX,GRID,RMAN,CRIT'
                        ]
        };
[download]

 for my $val ( keys %host_add ) {
    for ( @{ $host_add{$val} } ) {
        print $val, q{ }, join " ", @{ $host_add{$val} }, $/
          if $_ =~ m{CRIT|DMZ};
    }
}
[download]

denlas02 146.xxx.xxx.xxx LINUX,DEN,DMZ 
ppplas12 10.50.33.26 LINUX,GRID,RMAN,CRIT
[download]

Setting the record separator would help: $/ = "\n\n";. After that, a while(<>) { ... } will loop over individual records which you can then dissect using regexps.

However, that would be a hack as it doesn't follow the actual syntax of the Nagios file but exploits the fact that someone nice has put exactly one blank line between all records. Should you or your admin forget that one day, Nagios will still work but your script won't. I'm not quite sure if there are any subtleties such as escape characters to Nagios' config file syntax but I think it's pretty simple. I'd probably slurp the whole file into a string and then parse blocks with a regexp, using further matching on the whole block to find the relevant pieces of data:

my $file = do { local $/; <$filehandle> };
while($file =~ / define \s+ host \s* { (.*?) } \s* /gsx) {
   my ($hostname) = $1 =~ /host_name\s+(\S+)/;
   ...
}
[download]

As the data within define host{ ... } are effectively key/value pairs, you can capture that into a Perl hash then directly access host_name, address, etc. as required.

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $define_re = qr{ \A define \s+ host \{ \s+ ( .*? ) \s+ \} \s* \z }m
+sx;
my $crit_dmz_re = qr{ (?> CRIT | DMZ ) }x;
my $out_format = qq{%s (%s) in groups: %s\n};

local $/ = ''; 

while (<DATA>) {
    /$define_re/;
    my %block = ( split /\s+/ => $1 );

    if ($block{hostgroups} =~ /$crit_dmz_re/) {
        printf $out_format => @block{qw{host_name address hostgroups}}
+;
    }   
}   

__DATA__
define host{
   use                                  HALF
   host_name                      denlas02
   alias                                denlas02
   address                           146.xxx.xxx.xxx
   hostgroups                      LINUX,DEN,DMZ
}

define host{
        use                             HALF
        host_name                 ppplas11
        alias                            ppplas11
        address                       10.xxx.xxx.xxx
        hostgroups                 LINUX,PPO,ORAPRD
        }

define host{
        use                               ALIVE
        host_name                   ppplas12
        alias                              ppplas12
        address                        10.50.33.26
        hostgroups                   LINUX,GRID,RMAN,CRIT
        }
[download]

Output:

$ pm_hosts_parse.pl
denlas02 (146.xxx.xxx.xxx) in groups: LINUX,DEN,DMZ
ppplas12 (10.50.33.26) in groups: LINUX,GRID,RMAN,CRIT
[download]

Hello.

Another with flip-flop

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

my ($buff,$hostname,$address);
my $criteria="DMZ|CRIT";
while(<DATA>){
        #flip-flop. while /begin/ to /end/ condition, you enter the if
+ block
        #and line number is set to $num.
        if(my $num = /define\s+host\{/ .. /\s*\}/ ){
                $buff ='' if($num==1); #for regex match keep text to $
+buff
                $buff .=$_;

                if( /\s*host_name\s+(.*)/ ){ #get hostname
                        $hostname=$1;
                }
                if( /\s*address\s+(.*?)/ ){  #get address
                        $address= $1;
                }

                #E0 shows end of Block. if $buff has $criteria, print
                if ($num =~ /E0/ && $buff =~ /$criteria/s ){
                        print "$address $hostname is in $criteria \n";
                }
        }

}
__DATA__
same data with yours...
[download]

One another approach with grep. But this may not work well, I am sure.

egrep -A 2 -B 5 "hostgroups.*(CRIT|DMZ)" your_config_file
[download]