in reply to Reversing (the) reading of a file.

You should know it by now, there _HAS_ to be a CPAN module for this ;--)

In order to read a file backwards you can use...File::ReadBackwards!

I especially like the tied interface:

tie *BW, File::ReadBackwards, 'file' or die "can't read file $!"; while( <BW> ) { # do your stuff here ; }