Help on copying part of a text file

Hello all, I need some help on the following: I need to extract a paragraph from a text file that is delimited with a --start-paragraph-- and --end-paragraph-- However, after --start-paragraph-- there's a blank line that I need to remove. The delimiter --start-paragraph-- might be one the first line or it might be on any middle line of the line. That is, --start-paragraph line starts at some point on the file. Here's na example: --start-paragraph-- This is a paragraph that I need to extract with a php function and return just the string of it. --end-paragraph-- After I run the function extract_paragraph($content) I should get the string: "This is a paragraph that I need to extract with a php function and return just the string of it." Thanks for the help.