1. Is it really necessary to re-read the whole file each time? Does the file actually change that much or is it just appended to? If the latter see also File::Tail.

2. I'm guessing here, but you probably want more than one line out of the file, right? Try something like:

open IN,"<",$fileName or die "Can't open $filename: $!";
while (<IN>) { # read line from IN handle to $_
   if ($. == $some_number || $. == $some_other_number) { # $. is the c
+urrent line number
       # do stuff with the line in $_
   }
   last if $. > $last_interesting_line_number;
}
close IN;
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