Back again: I have some more questions. I also wanted to ask about cukimunsters help on my script. Here is the suggestion:

open(FW_LOG, $firewall_log)
    or die "$firewall_log open() failed: $!";
open(MYNEWFILE, ">>$my_new_log:")
    or die "$my_new_log open() failed: $!";
while ($line = <FW_LOG>) {
    if ($line =~ /kernel Temporarily blocking host/ || $line =~ /block
+ed/) {
    # your line transformations would go here...
    print MYNEWFILE $line;
}
close(FW_LOG) or die "$firewall_log close() failed: $!";
close(MYNEWFILE) or die "$my_new_log close() failed: $!";
[download]

Now, I was playing around with this code. (Granted, I am very new and raw to Perl so please bear with me.) I was trying to figure out how to implement this code and learn from it, but for some reason, I cannot seem to get it working. It is probably because I have a TON of information on Perl to learn, but I am working on it. Anyways, I tried to add some code from my original script and this is what I got: (Note, I cant get this script to work though :/ )

#!/usr/bin/perl
#Variables
$firewall_log = "/home/jwilliams/firewall.txt";
$my_new_log = "/home/jwilliams/extracted_log";

open(FW_LOG, $firewall_log)
    or die "$firewall_log open() failed: $!";
open(MYNEWFILE, ">>$my_new_log:")
    or die "$my_new_log open() failed: $!";
while ($line = <FW_LOG>) {
    if ($line =~ /kernel Temporarily blocking host/ || $line =~ /block
+ed/) {
    # your line transformations would go here...
    print MYNEWFILE $line;
}
close(FW_LOG) or die "$firewall_log close() failed: $!";
close(MYNEWFILE) or die "$my_new_log close() failed: $!";
[download]

If anyone has some thoughts, feel free to. I have learned a tremendous amount about Perl in just the last day from being here.

Secondly, what steps would anyone recommend take for me to fully learn and understand Perl so I can utilize it more efficiently? I appreciate all comments and suggestions.

Tarballed

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