Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="RodFGWA, post: 4799009"] Thank you all for your replies. I appreciate the time you have spent on my problem. Suppose I use the following solution: #!/usr/bin/perl use warnings; use strict; open FILE, '<', 'text_file' or die "Cannot open 'text_file' $!"; chomp( @ARGV = <FILE> ); close FILE; open OUT, '>>', 'OUTPUT_FILE' or die "Cannot open 'OUTPUT_FILE' $!"; my $lines = 10; while ( <> ) { $. == 1 && print OUT "*****\n"; $. <= $lines && print OUT $_; $. > $lines || eof and close ARGV; } __END__ I chose this one because it seems the likely candidate to extend for what I would ideally like to do. However, Perl is so obscure to me now that I may be wrong about that. I would like to print the lines of each file that begin with an open parenthesis '('. These are the comment lines in the beginning of each file. I originally chose the top ten lines because I thought that would suffice, but upon reflection, I need only the lines that begin with '('. Sometimes there are more than 10 comment lines. Once the comment lines have stopped there are additional lines, but I do not care about these, so I can go on to the next file. Ideally, I would like to print the lines that begin with certain headers beginning with a '(', such as '(CUSTOMER', or '(MATERIAL'. So, read each line Does it begin with '(' OR Does it begin with '(CUSTOMER' If it Does Print the line to the Output File [/QUOTE]