you can learn the basics of Perl first. One of the many good sources is straight from the doc. type perldoc perl for more info. otherwise, you can always view online Perl doc with your browser....

# perl -ne 'print if !(/\[SectionOne\]/ .. /\[SectionTWO\]/); ' file

Entry1=19
Entry2=hello there



use module like Config::IniFiles is still the best.

i think you shouldn't need to worry too much on whether its the correct directory because you would have set it properly when configuring your FTP server.

if your remote system runs telnet, you can use the Perl's telnet module to telnet to remote system, gzip the file and return to calling script.

are you saying you are running a web server , and then the web server will call this perl script to call notepad whenever someone click a button on a web page?