If you are going to be processing megabytes of data or more then it is probably a good idea to buffer chunks of it into RAM as it is *much* faster than processing it line by line using IO. If you plan buffering then I recommend something like this 
{
    # NOTE: code is untested
    my @chunks = ();
    local $/ = \102400;
    while(<$fh>) {
        my $chunk   = $_;
        my $last_rs = rindex($chunk, $/)
        push @chunks, substr($chunk, 0, $last_rs);

        seek($fh, 1, -(length($chunk) - $last_rs));
    }
}

[download]
This should read up to 100k chunks at a time but also making sure the chunk ends on a new line. As far as I'm aware there are no buffering modules like you describe (at least a quick CPAN search doesn't seem to turn anything up) so perhaps it's time to write one?
HTH

_________
broquaint

In reply to Re: Fastest I/O possible? by broquaint
in thread Fastest I/O possible? by Anonymous Monk

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