If you only want to keep knowledge of the last 'few' lines, you can keep a rolling array. Something like... 
$num_to_keep = 10;

while( <FILE> ) {
    push @saved_lines, $_;
    ...do your stuff...
    shift @saved_lines if @saved_lines > $num_to_keep;
}

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Any good (1st perl monk post...:-)

In reply to Re: read lines... wait by jbert
in thread read lines... wait, back up? by Konda

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