Howe to read the last line in the file? 1

[vasilek]

I need to see what is the value of a "field" on the last line in the text file.

I know how to open the file, but do not know how to read only what is on the last line?

I started like this:

open (FILEHANDLE, &quot;<../data/textfile.file&quot || print (&quot;Cannot open file&quot;

Thanks.

 

[duncdude]

how about this - as long as on UNIX...

$lastLine = `tail -1 ../data/textfile.file`;

print &quot;$lastLine\n&quot;;

Regards
Duncan

 

[133tcamel]

if you have a relatively small file compared to the free memory, the you can use something like this

open (FILEHANDLE, &quot;<../data/textfile.file&quot;) || print (&quot;Cannot open file&quot;);
 
my @lines = <FILEHANDLE>;
my $line = pop @lines;

---
cheers!
san

&quot;The universe has been expanding, and Perl's kind of been expanding along with the universe&quot; - Larry Wall

 

[usige]

Here's a quick and dirty way to do it:

open (FILEHANDLE, &quot;< ../data/textfile.file&quot;) || print (&quot;Cannot open file&quot;); 
while (<FILEHANDLE>) { $lastline = $_; }

After the while loop $lastline will have the last line in the file.

Hope taht helps.

 

[icrf]

NEVERSLEEP well over a year ago pointed me to File::ReadBackwards when I had the same question:

http://search.cpan.org/author/URI/File-ReadBackwards-1.00/ReadBackwards.pm

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...but I'm just a C man trying to see the light

 

[usige]

Thanks, icrf. I had considered a solution that uses lowlevel io, but, hey, someone else already invented this wheel so who am I to recreate it.