As others have said, this is wasteful because it reads the whole file while it should read only the first 9 lines.

If you want a solution that has no visible loop (or map etc), you could try using the module Tie::File. This module is in the standard Perl distrib. (Note that Tie::File numbers the lines with zero-offset.)

Otherwise, for me 

$l= <$F> for 1..9;

[download]
seems the best solution but there might be a more elegant one.

In reply to Re: Best way to read line x from a file by ambrus
in thread Best way to read line x from a file by Melly

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