hari,
I am not exactly sure I understand what you are trying to do. You say that you want to point to the previous line, so that if you read from the file handle, it returns the same line. Returning the same line is not the same as retrieving the previous line.

Since I do not completely understand - let me offer some possible alternatives:

  • You could use the "redo" command in a while loop if you want the same line and not the previous line
  • You could read each line in and store the previous line in a buffer
  • You could mark each position using tell and seek back as has been suggested
  • You could store the file in an array as has been suggested if memory is not an issue
  • You could use Tie::File (which treats a file as an array) if memory is an issue, but speed is not

    To help you more than that - you need to explain more clearly what you are trying to do by giving a sample file and showing what you want to do at each point in the file.

    Hope this helps - cheers - L~R

    Update: While I was working on posting this, rir had already come up with the idea of temporarily storing the previous line

    In reply to Re: point to previous line by Limbic~Region
    in thread point to previous line by hari

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