Hi,

I have a script 

open(FILE, "<$ARGV[$#ARGV - 1]");
open(OUTFILE, ">$ARGV[$#ARGV]");

while (<FILE>)
{
  $endarg = $#ARGV - 2;
  
	if (/^[ ]*name $ARGV[0] / ... /^[ ]*endname/ ) {
	} else {
		print OUTFILE $_;
	}
		
		
}



which prints out the contents of a file but skips the bits between 

name <persons name>
...
endname

where persons name is the first argument from the command line so i run this like

script.pl smith infile outfile

what I would like is to do an arbitary number of names at the same time

script.pl smith brown infile outfile

so $ARGV[0] would need to be something like $ARGV[0] ... $ARGV[$#ARGV - 1]

Regards,

Mick

---

Clarification of Question by mickr-ga on 11 Aug 2006 00:30 PDT

Thanks very much! Got it to work!

Add a state variable that indicates whether you are printing or not
printing and you can set this variable to "not printing" in a loop
that tests all the names.

how about this

$search_string = join("|", $ARGV[0]..$ARGV[$#ARGV - 2]);

	if (/^[ ]*name ($search_string) / ... /^[ ]*endname/ ) {
	} else {
		print OUTFILE $_;
	}

Great got it to work using 

$search_string = join("|", @ARGV[0 .. $#ARGV - 2]);

thanks very much!