There is a file of unknown length. I want to read X bytes from the end of that file. Here is my script:

$bytes = 100000;
open (FILE, 'somefile.data');
seek (FILE, -$bytes, 2);
while (<FILE>) {
   print $_;
}
close FILE;

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This works perfectly fine on most of the machines I try it on. However, it does NOT work on SOME machines where $bytes is greater than the size of the file. I.e., if the file is 10kb and I ask to read the last 100kb it returns "nothing" on some servers, while on others it works.

I tried to add the following, thinking that the aforementioned seek would return "false" on those machines:

seek (FILE, 0, 1) unless seek (FILE, -$bytes,2);

This didn't do anything. The same problem is occuring when I try to seek with a too large byte offset.

Can someone help?

Thanks...

In reply to problem using seek on some systems by lokiloki

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