In case you want to get rid of the $_ = <FILE>, you could also write something like

my $skip_n = 0;

while (<FILE>) {
    next if $skip_n && $skip_n--;

    if (/blah/) {
        $skip_n = 2; # schedule the skipping of two lines
    }
}
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++

The beauty of this approach is that you don't find your code trying to read past the end of the file just to skip lines.

Also, if you don't know how many lines to skip but you *do* know what the first line-of-interest starts with, you can say something like (untested):

my $good_start = 0;
while (<FILE>) {
    next unless (($good_start) || (/^start-of-data pattern/);
    $good_start = 1;

    # do things with the interesting lines
}
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open (file.....)
while (<FILE>) {
   my $skip_next = 0;

   if /blah/ {
       $skip_next = 1;
   }

   elsif ( ... something else ... ) {
   }

   elsif ( ... third condition ... ) {
       $skip_next = 1;
   }

   ....

   $_ = <FILE> if $skip_next;
} # while reading through the file
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Revised: If you need to skip a variable number of lines, you could set $skip_next to the number of lines you wish to skip, and use a loop rather than the final assignment.

If you know you want to skip a certain number of lines without looking at them:

my $lines_to_skip = 2 or 3; # or whatever
for (1..$lines_to_skip) { <FILE> }
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Hmm, not sure about this method, but it works in theory.

open (file.....)
while (<FILE>) {
   $. = 2; # $. holds the number of the last read line
   .....
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I am not sure if it should be the one I posted above or next if $. == 1 or if $. == 2 though. I have no time to check right now. (Also, I am not sure if it starts counting at 0 or 1. Change the numbers accordingly

Changing $. does not move the file pointer. The only way to skip ahead without actually reading would be to use seek() which doesn't mix well with buffered variable-length line-oriented operations.

--
[ e d @ h a l l e y . c c ]

Oh, alright. I thought my idea was pretty cool though~

Can you (or anyone) confirm if the next if... method works?

<(^.^-<) <(-^.^<) <(-^.^-)> (>^.^-)> (>-^.^)>

Sorry new here

open FILE, "<", "try.dt" or die $!;
while (<FILE>) {
    next if $. <= 2;
    print $_;
}
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open (FILE, "<", "test") or die "can't open" ;

sub SKPLN($) {($_[0]!=0) and <FILE> and SKPLN($_[0]-1)}

while (<FILE>) {
    SKPLN(1), next if /blah/ ;

    SKPLN(2), next if second condition ;
.....
}
[download]

open (file.....)
while (<FILE>) {
   if /blah/ {
       <FILE>;   # Skip one line
       <FILE> foreach(1..$skip); # Skip a numer of lines
[download]