What's the best/smartest way to grab lines from a file and discard them from the file after they've been used?

I want to be able to open it up, use a few lines, delete those lines and close it, so that when I come to use that file again I'm starting from the next unused line.

I could of course read the whole thing into an array, shift off the lines then write the remainder back, but there must be a more elegant way -- should I Tie this file in some way? Or have I missed something obvious?


($_='kkvvttuubbooppuuiiffssqqffssmmiibbddllffss')
=~y~b-v~a-z~s; print

In reply to Shifting the top line(s) of a file? by Cody Pendant

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