Have you looked at File::Tail? http://search.cpan.org/~mgrabnar/File-Tail-0.98/Tail.pm

Update 

    use File::Tail;
    my $ref=tie *FH,"File::Tail",(name=>$name, tail=>1);
    print "$_";

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I don't have this module installed so this is untested.
CC

In reply to Re: tail -1 emulation efficiency by coec
in thread tail -1 emulation efficiency by woodstea

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