use strict; use warnings; use Data::Dumper; open my $logFH, q{<}, \ <<'EOD' or die qq{open: << HEREDOC: $!\n}; 2009-02-02 06:12:57,500 dates processed: 2009-01-31, 2009-01-29, 2009-01-30 2009-02-18 06:03:47,713 dates processed: 2009-02-16, 2009-02-17 Different line here 2009-02-19 05:58:29,138 dates processed: 2009-02-18 EOD my @results = (); while( <$logFH> ) { chomp; push( @results, [] ), next unless m{dates processed:}; my @dates = m{(\d{4}-\d\d-\d\d)}g; push @results, \ @dates; } close $logFH or die qq{close: << HEREDOC: $!\n}; print Data::Dumper->Dumpxs( [ \ @results ], [ qw{ *results } ] );