Note that having the timeout in can_read is actually essential, or else when nothing is writing to the file you'll never return from the can_read call - this means you won't generate the message unless you follow this advice and add a timeout to can_read.

Of course, if you're already putting a timeout in the can_read call anyway, why not go all the way and just put the 60 second timeout in there? Something like this:

for (;;) {
  if (@ready = $select->can_read(60)) {
    # input waiting on the filehandles in @ready
    foreach $filehandle (@ready) {
       while (<$filehandle>) {
        chomp();
        if (m/^Hello/) { $log->error("This is a hello msg"); }
        else { $log->error("message was not recieved");        }
      }
    }
  } else {
    $log->error("No new messages in the last 60 seconds");
  }
}
[download]

Now, this does mean that your "every 10 seconds" idea has gone away, but it was never really there in the first place - as I mentioned before, can_read will block forever if you don't give it a timeout, and this code won't be running your cpu time through the roof because can_read will block, up to the given timeout interval.

As someone else mentioned, though, look at File::Tail and see if it can do the hard stuff for you.

--
@/=map{[/./g]}qw/.h_nJ Xapou cets krht ele_ r_ra/;
map{y/X_/\n /;print}map{pop@$_}@/for@/
[download]