read in values from middle of file

[Ito2233]

I have a dat file looking like this:
__________
Running totals:
Question 1: 60
Question 2: 123
Question 3: 99

Averages:
Question 1: 4.6
Question 2: 9.5
Question 3: 7.6
___________

I have a code to store the Running totals into a hash, such as the following:

my %hash; my $key; my $value;
open(ANSWERTALLY, "answertally.dat");
while(ANSWERTALLY n) {
($key, $value) = split(/\s=\s/);
chomp($value);
$hash{$key} = $value;
}
close(ANSWERTALLY);

However, this code will try to read everything in the file. How can I tell it to skip the first line (RUNNING TOTALS), and stop executing when it encounters AVERAGES:???
I'm not too good with string manipulation or regular expressions.

Thanks

 

[chazoid]

I'm not sure if this is the best way, but it does work.. I assumed you wanted to split on the colon, so I changed that regex

while (<ANSWERTALLY>){
   last if /^Averages:/;
   next if /^(Running totals:|\s*$)/; 
   chomp;
   ($key, $value) = split(/:/);
   $hash{$key} = $value;
}

The 'last' statement exits the while loop if the line begins with "Averages:"
The 'next' statement skips the line if it begins with "Running totals:", or if there's a blank line