Perl print unless regex and line counts -

i have working sorting through zone file automated deletions..

perl -i -ne 'print unless (/#$domainname/ , \$n=7) .. not \$n--' named.conf.ext

(escaping n required work, guess else thinks main script has n variable passed?)

this call within perl script , clean not having call shell re-run perl perl script it, , having main script it.

not perl expert here can tell :) have tried things like

open (datain, "<named.conf.ext");  open (dataout, "> named.conf.tmp");  while (<datain>){   print unless (/#foo.com/ , $n=7) .. not $n-- dataout;  }  close dataout; close datain; 

and few variants, complains syntax error @ test line 4, near "-- dataout"

i'm sure i'm being spacey @ this, , answer right in front of me, 2 days, think brain needs kick start in where.

thanks

it's normally

print dataout; 

which short

print dataout $_; 

so want

print dataout unless (/#foo.com/ , $n=7) .. not $n--; 

or longer

print dataout $_ unless (/#foo.com/ , $n=7) .. not $n--;