I have two subroutines 
sub get_first
{
    # usage: get_first("firstfile");
    my $f1=shift; # first file
    tie my @file1, 'Tie::File', "$workdir$f1" or die("Can't tie $f1: $
+!\n");
    my $first=@file1[0];
    untie @file1;
    my ($dow, $month, $day, $time, $year, $line)=split(/\s+/, $first);
    my $start_time=join ' ', $month,$day,$year,$time;
    return $start_time;
}

sub get_last
{
    # usage: get_last("lastfile");
    my $f2=shift; # last File
    tie my @file2, 'Tie::File', "$workdir$f2" or die("Can't tie $f2: $
+!\n");
    my $last=@file2[$#file2];
    untie @file2;
    my ($dow, $month, $day, $time, $year, $line)=split(/\s+/, $last);
    my $end_time=join ' ', $month,$day,$year,$time;
    return $end_time;
}

[download]
and they are called like this: 
$rfmain_beg=&get_first($rfmain[0]);
$rfmain_end=&get_last($rfmain[$#rfmain]);

[download]
where @rfmain holds a list of file names. The problem is that this takes a very long time, the files are about 120 - 220 meg each. I just need the very first line of the first file and the very last line of the last file. These are log files and each line begins with a date. Is there a better way of doing this? Ive looked around, but Tie::File seems to be mentioned quite a bit.

Thanks in advance
Ted

UPDATE
Thanks using File::ReadBackwards worked nicely.

In reply to Speeding up Tie::File by tcf03

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