If you don't have to select the lines randomly then you could do something like this: 
    #!/usr/bin/perl -w

    use strict;

    my $passwords = 'passwords';
    my $rec_size  = 9;
    my $password;

    open PASS, "+<$passwords" or die "Error message here $!";

    # Seek from end of file
    seek PASS, -$rec_size, 2;

    # Store the position of the last seek
    my $last = tell PASS;

    # Read the password but not the newline
    read PASS, $password, $rec_size -1;

    # Remove the record just read
    truncate PASS, $last;

    close PASS;

    print $password, "\n";

    __END__

[download]

This method will be significantly faster than the method shown above.

--
John.

In reply to Re: popping or shifting a line off a file by jmcnamara
in thread popping or shifting a line off a file by nmerriweather

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