in reply to tailing a file without printing its entire contents

Another possibility, untested.
open(FH, 'logfile.txt') || die "Could not op en logfile.txt"; @arr=<FH>; # Read whole file into array. my $lines=10; # Print last 10 lines my $start=$#arr-$lines; for $i (@arr($start..$#arr)) { print "$arr[$i]\n"; } close(FH);
Perl 5.8.8 on Redhat Linux RHEL 5.5.56 (64-bit)