There's no need for a temporary array when doing:

  @reverse = reverse @data;
  @data = @reverse;
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You can just do: @data = reverse @data and then print $data[0];. But to get the last item, you don't need to reverse the list -- just use the $#data or -1 index .. these are all the same:

  print $data[-1];
  print $data[$#data];
  print pop @data;    # NOTE: THIS SHORTENS THE ARRAY
  print scalar splice(@data,-1);   # NOTE: SAME AS pop
# or:
  @data = reverse @data;  # OF COURSE, @data IS NOW MODIFIED
  print $data[0];
  print shift @data;  # NOTE: THIS SHORTENS THE ARRAY
  print scalar splice(@data,0,1);  # NOTE: SAME AS shift
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All of that is assuming you read your whole file into an array in memory, which is obviously costly for memory if the file is large ... A quick search revealed Read Last Line of A File Only