Hello again newperlbie,

(1) Please read Markup in the Monastery “Chapter 1” and update your post accordingly.

(2) “in fact that was my previous comment, but I removed it”

In future, please use <strike>...</strike> tags around discarded text rather than deleting it. Also clearly mark any updates as such. This will reduce the likelihood of confusion for responders to your posts.

(3) “I figured a way to grep it from the middle of the line.”

Good! (But then, why the next question?)

(4) “The key column can be any where ,not necessarily last....what should be the adaptation now.”

Can the key column change from one line to another? Is it guaranteed that the key words will never appear accidentally in non-key positions within a line? If so, you can just test for the presence of a keyword anywhere in the line with a simple regular expression:

while (<DATA>)
{
    if (/\b$first\b/ .. /\b$last\b/)
    {
        $in = 1;
        print;
    }
    elsif ($in && /\b$last\b/)
    {
        print;
    }
    else
    {
        $in = 0;
    }
}

[download]

(In a regex, \b matches a word boundary.)

Hope that helps,

Athanasius <°(((>< contra mundum Iustus alius egestas vitae, eros Piratica,

In reply to Re^7: Reading multiple lines from text file by Athanasius
in thread Reading multiple lines from text file by newperlbie

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.