use strict; use warnings; open my $inFH, q{<}, \ <; }; close $inFH or die qq{close: < \ HEREDOC: $!\n}; $data =~ s{\n\S+-}{}g; open $inFH, q{<}, \ $data or die qq{open: < \ scalar: $!\n}; while (<$inFH> ) { # Do a single data extraction regex here. ... } close $inFH or die qq{close: < \ scalar: $!\n};