use strict; use warnings; open (NEW, ">", "output.txt" ) or die "could not open:$!"; my $find = 'COMPUTER1'; my $inside = 0; my $data = ''; while () { next if (/^$/); $inside = 1 if /COMPUTER1/; if ($inside){ $inside=0; next; } else{ $data .= $_; print NEW $_ } } print '[' . $data . ']'; close(NEW) __DATA__ COMPUTER1 ACCT1 ACCT2 ACCT3 COMPUTER1 ACCT4 ACCT7 ACCT8 ACCT9