Thanks for the suggestion. I think that comes close to what I'm trying to achieve. Problem is that the "exit" doesn't allow me to continue with further grepping of the input stream.

Here's a more complete snippet of the shell script that I'm using, showing that I'm just trying to use Perl to grep the incoming data stream (in paragraph mode).

#! /bin/sh

## other stuff happens here, but snipped for clarity

scdir=/var/log

find $scdir -type f -name "nts_*.bz2" |    # find interesting files in
+ $scdir
  perl -wnl -e '7 > -M and print;' |        # ignore old files
    xargs bzcat -k |                # unpack contents to STDOUT
      perl -wn00 -e '                # paragraph mode

    m[kernel\.hostname\s.\s(.*?)\n] and print "Hostname:\t$1\n";    # 
+grep for hostname
    m[\/bin\/date\n(.*?)\n] and print "Generated:\t$1\n";    # grep fo
+r date

        ## I grep for other stuff here, but snipped for clarity

        m[Settings.for\s(.*?):\n] and print "Interface:\t$1\n";    # g
+rep for eth interfaces

        m[Speed:\s(.*?)Mb\/s] and            # grep for interface spee
+d
        print "\ -speed:\t$1Mb\/s\n" ;

    m[Duplex:\s(.*?)\n] and                # grep for interface duplex
        print "\ -duplex:\t$1\n" ;

        m[Auto-negotiation:\s(.*?)\n] and        # grep for interface 
+autoneg
        print "\ -autoneg:\t$1\n" ; 

    m[cpuinfo\nvendor_id\s+:\s(.*?)\n] and        # grep for cpu id
      print "CPU:\t\t$1\n" ;

      '
exit $!
[download]

The output is something like the following:

Generated:      Tue Dec  4 12:12:01 GMT 2007
Hostname:       lnx0010
CPU:            IBM/S390
CPU:            IBM/S390
Interface:      hsi0
 -speed:        100Mb/s
 -duplex:       Full
 -autoneg:      on
Interface:      hsi1
 -speed:        100Mb/s
 -duplex:       Full
 -autoneg:      on
Interface:      sit0
 -speed:        100Mb/s
 -duplex:       Full
 -autoneg:      on
CPU:            IBM/S390

Generated:      Mon Dec  3 12:34:19 GMT 2007
Hostname:       ptsuse3
CPU:            GenuineIntel
Interface:      eth0
 -speed:        100Mb/s
 -duplex:       Full
 -autoneg:      on
Interface:      eth1
 -speed:        100Mb/s
 -duplex:       Full
 -autoneg:      on

Generated:      Mon Jun 18 15:33:40 BST 2007
Hostname:       icore-71
CPU:            GenuineIntel
CPU:            GenuineIntel
Interface:      eth0
 -speed:        100Mb/s
 -duplex:       Half
 -autoneg:      on
[download]

You'll notice that there are several "CPU:" lines -- and that's because there are several occurences of the following 2-line string in the input stream:

# /proc/cpuinfo
vendor_id       : IBM/S390
[download]

I'm wanting to quit after matching the first occurence of that string, but to continue with my other "grep" statements.

I'm new to Perl, so am open to criticism of my general approach to this problem.

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