Here's a subroutine that does what you want, and optionally trims the file as well. It assumes a line length of 72 bytes and goes back number of lines * 72. If it doesn't get enough lines it goes back another block. This is quite efficient especially when you only want a few lines at the end of a file, even for huge files. It's only 'slow' when you want 1000's of lines 
###########################################################
sub read_log {

   my $logfile=shift;
   my $lines_wanted=shift;
   my $TRIM=shift;

   my $lines_found=0;

   my $BLOCK=$lines_wanted * 72;  #Assume 72 chars (bytes) per line

   my $i=0;
   my @lines=();
   my $GO_BACK=$BLOCK;
   my $SEEK_RESULT=1;
   if (open(LOG,$logfile) ) {

      ## Stop if we have enough lines, or go back past the start
      while ( $lines_found < $lines_wanted and $SEEK_RESULT) {

         $SEEK_RESULT=seek LOG,-$GO_BACK,2; # Goto back approx request
+ed lines
         <LOG>;                       # Chuck the first line remnant
         @lines=<LOG>;                 # Get the rest of the lines
         $lines_found=scalar (@lines); # Count the lines
         $GO_BACK+=$BLOCK;
         $i++;
      }
      close LOG;
      # If too many lines, just splice the array
      my $diff=$lines_found - $lines_wanted;
      splice @lines,0,$diff if $diff;
      trim_file($logfile,\@lines) if $TRIM;

   } else {
     print "Couldn't open $logfile: $!<BR>";
   }
}

###########################################################
# Takes a file name and array of lines, backs up the existing file
# and trims it.

sub trim_file {
    my $file =shift || die "No filename passed to trim_file()\n";
    my $lines=shift || die "No lines passed to trim_file()\n";

    my $backup="$file.bak";

    unlink $backup if -e $backup;
    rename $file,$backup;
    open (OUT,">$file") or die "Couldn't create $file:$!\n";
    print OUT foreach @$lines;
    close OUT;
}

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In reply to Re^2: Performing a tail(1) in Perl (reading the last N lines of a file) by Anonymous Monk
in thread Performing a tail(1) in Perl (reading the last N lines of a file) by grinder

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