Grep the second line from a file?

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Dear Monks, I was wondering, is there a way of grepping the 2nd line from a file without going the "normal" way, i.e. open FILE, $file etc? I am just asking for a quick one, I know how to do it by opening the file and either using a while loop or storing all lines in an array.

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Re: Grep the second line from a file? (flip a coin) by toolic (Bishop) on Mar 19, 2014 at 23:58 UTC
Non-Perl solution on unix to get just the 2nd line of a file: `head -2 file \| tail -1` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Grep the second line from a file? by Anonymous Monk on Mar 19, 2014 at 23:42 UTC
Not sure what exactly you mean by "grepping the 2nd line from a file", could you provide some sample input with expected output? `# prints only the second line of the file perl -ne 'print if $.==2' -- FILENAME # prints only the second line of the file if it matches a pattern perl -ne 'print if $.==2 && /pattern/' -- FILENAME` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Grep the second line from a file? by graff (Chancellor) on Mar 20, 2014 at 03:31 UTC
Depending on how large the input file(s) might be, it could be worthwhile to type just two more little words: `perl -ne 'print and last if $.==2' -- FILENAME` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Grep the second line from a file? by Anonymous Monk on Mar 19, 2014 at 23:47 UTC
Many thanks, your first snippet of code is all I need :)	[reply]