Unless your lines are all the same length, I think the best way is probably that which you've chosen. If, however, your lines are all the same length, you could use seek();.

Here is how I read in a specific line from a file if I am only interested in the one bit of a file. 

$. = 0;
do { $LINE = <FILE> } until $. == $DESIRED_LINE_NUMBER || eof;

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Now, if you're going to potentially bounce around within the file (say, look at line 5000, then line 20, then line 42, etc), there are other strategies, but since I don't think that's what you're looking for, we won't go there right yet. . .

- - arden.
arden is more of an orangutan than a monkee

In reply to Re: Best way to read line x from a file by arden
in thread Best way to read line x from a file by Melly

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