Pattern Matchng for only one instance

[jain236]

Hi all,
i have a text file in which i am searching for a pattern which appears many times, but i just want to search for the 1 instance only and it should skip all other similar pattern.

your help will be appreciated and thanking you in advance

jain

[KevinADC]

while (<>) {
   if (/(pattern)/) {
      print "found 'pattern' in line number $.\n";
      last;
   }
}