A simple solution is to reset a variable at each <START> tag like this. I've added a few extra print messages to show the processing ;

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
# use strftime
use POSIX qw(strftime);
my $logdate = strftime "%Y%m%d", localtime;
my $logpath = "c:/temp"  # change to suit;

# set directory
my $dir = "$logpath/$logdate";

# get list of files with mtime in seconds
opendir(FD,$dir) or die "$!\n";
my @files = map { [ (stat("$dir/$_"))[9] ,$_ ] } grep !/^\.\.?$/,readd
+ir(FD);
print "List of files in $dir\n";
for (@files){  print "@$_\n" };
close(FD);

# sort latest first
sub rev_by_date { $b->[0] <=> $a->[0] };
my @sorted_list = sort rev_by_date @files;
print "List of sorted files\n";
for (@sorted_list){  print "@$_\n" };

# shift latest file from front of array
my $latestlog = ( shift @sorted_list )->[1];
print "lastest log = $latestlog\n";

#fetching the last modified log
my $logfile = "$dir/$latestlog";
open(F,'<',$logfile) or die "Could not open $logfile : $!\n";

# store last message only
my $message;
while (<F>){
  if (/^<START date/){
    $message = $_;
  } else {
    $message .= $_;
  }
}
close(F);
print $message;
#sendmail($now,$message);
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poj