You can read the entire file into a scalar variable like this

{
    open(FILE, "$filename") or die "Cant open $filename\n";
    local $/ = undef;
    $lines = <FILE>;
    close(FILE);
}
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m

Treat string as multiple lines. That is, change ``^'' and ``$'' from matching at only the very start or end of the string to the start or end of any line anywhere within the string,

s

Treat string as single line. That is, change ``.'' to match any character whatsoever, even a newline, which it normally would not match. The /s and /m modifiers both override the $* setting. That is, no matter what $* contains, /s without /m will force ``^'' to match only at the beginning of the string and ``$'' to match only at the end (or just before a newline at the end) of the string. Together, as /ms, they let the ``.'' match any character whatsoever, while yet allowing ``^'' and ``$'' to match, respectively, just after and just before newlines within the string.

After you've opened and read the file (or web page) into an array, join all lines with join().

open(FILE, "$filename");
@lines = <FILE>;
close(FILE);

$content = join('', @lines);

You might not want to have your WHOLE file in one variable. Depending on the size of the file, it could eat a LOT of your memory. From my own experience, it is usually enough for me to do $/ = '\n\n' and then the linebreak is 2 new lines, not one. I was parsing a bounce file when I was doing this, which was about 300megs in size, daily. thats a LONG 300mb line. $/ = '\n\n'; took care of it. i ended up with having.. smaller big lines, and was able to do what I wanted to do without consuming a lot of RAM.

The key is two get the whole file into one scalar( the first 'while' loop). Then the 'g' modifier ( the condition in the second 'while' loop ) will keep the place of the last match found and continue from there until there are no matches found.

open( FH, "filename" ) || die "couldn't open\n";

while ( <FH> ) {
    $data .= $_;
}

while ( $data =~ m/PATTERN/g ) {
    # executed code
    # executed code...etc.
}
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