If you know the size of the last line you can use 'seek' to get there, but this operates on bytes, not chars. If the records are of a fixed size this would be the most efficient way to do it.
use POSIX; #This gives us the SEEK_END constant seek (FH, -$recsize, SEEK_END) or die "Could not seek: $!"; $last = <FH>; But if the records have variable lengths you end up seeking to the end, read a char, seek back 2, read 1, seek back 2... until you get the next record separator. If you have really big files this might be worth while, but you will have more maintainable code if you forget about this type of optimization until it's shown itself to be a problem. I'd stick with the idiom I posted earlier if the files are guaranteed to be small or the loop structure proposed by smoot if the files may be large. Peter C. -----Original Message----- If the file is huge I wouldn't recommend doing so.. because it puts all the file into your array I think you can go directly to the last line if you know exactly the length of the last line, am I wrong on this one? Like seeking to the end and reading backwards of n chars? Etienne -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
