note Anonymous Monk <code> perl -ne ' $s=<>; <>; <>; do_something_with_$s' </code> <p>is equivalent to <p><code> perl -e ' while (<>) { $s=<>; <>; <>; do_something_with_$s} ' </code> <p>so 4 lines will be read each pass, but only the second line will be used for anything <p>Personally, I'd go with something like <p><code> perl -ne 'chomp; print length($_)."\n" if (/^@/);' </code> <p>instead. 1014740 1014749 0