I have a question....How can I compare two different times' but skip skip any lines that have text? Every 10 seconds a ping is sent out. For any time greater than 10 seconds I want to document that a packet was lost. The file contains headers for every 5 minutes. The problem is that whenever it comes across a header, it makes it look like a packet was lost. Any suggestions? My code is below. Thanks in advance. 
foreach my $line (<FILE>) {     # Do following for each line infile
chomp $line;
if ($line =~ /^\b\d/){                  # Skip lines that contain text
($timestamp, undef, $out, undef, undef, undef, $in, undef)=split(/\t/,
+ $line);  # Sort out needed columns
my $seconds = ($timestamp - $last_time);     # Determine elapsed time
if ($seconds > .00012){           # For time longer than 10 seconds
 my $time = DateTime::Format::Excel->parse_datetime($timestamp); # For
+mat time/date
 my $logdate = $time->ymd;              # Date format
 my $logtime = $time->hms;              # Time format
 my $error_name = "$center Error Log $log_time";
open(PACKETS,">> /directory/logs/error_log.txt");
print PACKETS "Packet lost on $logdate at $logtime\n" or die "Can't op
+en file $!"; # Write to log file
 }
$last_time = $timestamp;          # Store as previous time to compare

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In reply to Skip header text when comparing time by ITmajor

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