Be a nice idea, as you said, logs can get big, and its normally the latest occurance of something you want.
I would like to see it in another identifier rather than a switch, maybe like $endread only becuase i would like to see the last line of the file be treated like its line1, 2nd to last as line2 etc, i think this would cut down of disk access as well, since the file wouldnt need to be read forward to the line number you want and then a search take place reading back again.
example
-- filename.txt --
fred
carpert
dog
marketed
-- filename.txt --
$endread(filename.txt,1) => marketed : $endreadn = 1
$endread(filename.txt,w,*r*e*d*,2) => carpert : $endreadn = 3
Since i would assume the normal $read(,w,N) reads the file down to line N (lines being defined by $lf or $crlf), then searchs from there on, I wouldnt see it overly hard to read the file backwards from the end toward the begining, breaking lines when encountering $lf or $lf then a $cr (working backward).
(Obviuosly i think either way actually loads blocks of the file into ram and processes it from there, rather than actually making byte by byte disk requests.)
I guess its something that could be created using custom aliases and bread's but built in would of course be faster.
