How can I emulate 'grep -B' functionality in Perl?

Question

I have been searching for a solution that allows me to search the lines of an array, and if a string match is made, push that line and the 2 previous lines into an array. It

Answer 1

A basic version of your subroutine. I assume you wanted to return the list when done with it. Untested.

sub ipsearch {
    my $ip = shift;
    my @IPVSCONFIG = (); # no matches should be empty list, not undef
    my @buffer = ()      # to avoid undef warnings
    for (@RAWDATA) {
        push @buffer, $_;
        shift @buffer if @buffer > 3;
        if (/\W+virtual\s$ip\s/) {
            push @IPVSCONFIG, @buffer;
            @buffer = ();
        }
    }
    return @IPVSCONFIG;
}