Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi all
I have written a perl script which looks at one file and if new entry is made to that file then it runs some scripts depending upon the entry made to file( used File::Tail module ) . This script is running as “root” in nohup mode. Script works fine but I want to add restart logic.
If scripts exits in between consider on line 15 and by the time I restart the script 5 more entries are added to file so 15-20 entries are never processed I don't want that. I am thinking of writing last processed time in one file but I am not getting how can I process those 5 lines how can start tailing of file from line 15 and not 20. Or should I create dummy file?
All suggestions are welcome.

IF the file has a unqiue line identifier - for example: like a timestamp, everytime your code processes the line, write the unqiue indentifier to a file or a db table. Otherwise use the linenumber in the file.

When you restart, search forward to find the last unique identifier you processed, since you can recover it from the file or table. Anything in the logfile past that point is new.

I could have sworn File::Tail already has some function/method to handle this type of scenario.

Hi... Wonder if you solved this...

I was thinking keep a line counter around in the script and store it's last value in a separate file every time you process a line. If your script exits, when you re-start get the last line count (from your external file or DB wher ever you put it) and do a seek() to the line + 1, etc...

hi quine thanx for reply ...

ya i wrote that logic abt 2 weeks back only
i used the same logic as u suggested keep last entry in one file when script runs ( fresh start ) then compare last entry on main file & restart file if not same then get all lines from main file in another temp file process them and once all that finished do compare again ... every time i process file i update entry in restart file.