Answer: How do I copy out the last line written in a file? contributed by Fastolfe There are three commonly proposed methods to do this: Read the entire file @array = <FILE>; $last_line = $array[$#array]; [download] This involves reading the entire file before examining the last line, which can be costly in memory and performance for large files. Seek to the end and backtrack seek(FILE, -81, 2); # 81 bytes from the end, which should +be enough @lines = <FILE>; $last_line = $lines[$#lines]; # similar to above, but we don't read +much [download] Use File::ReadBackwards tie *FILE, File::ReadBackwards 'input_file'; while (<FILE>) { # line-by-line starting from the end } [download] This latter method is supposed to be efficient and fast, so I imagine it uses some variation of the seek() method above.

Answer: How do I copy out the last line written in a file? contributed by merlyn And don't forget File::Tail, which can keep up with the file as it grows (of which this request is often a part).

Answer: How do I copy out the last line written in a file? contributed by I0 use Tie::File: use Tie::File; sub last_line_of_file { my $file = shift; tie my @array, 'Tie::File', $file or die "read $file - $!"; $array[-1] } [download]

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