Hi, was trying to reproduce the code below. I was wondering what the 1 is doing before the while. Is it the exit status of the while, that is until eof is reached and exit code = 1 ?
thanks, radhika > If you're not reading from any other files, you don't need the > $count > variable in this case. The special variable $. holds the number of > lines read since a filehandle was last explicitly closed: > > 1 while <FILE>; > $count = $.; > > This reads all the records in the file and discards them. > > But if you really do need to do this via a system command -- you don't, > but I'll play along -- then the command as you've given it is what is > known as a Useless Use Of Cat. > > This command -- > > cat file | wc -l > > -- is equivalent to this one -- > > wc -l file > > -- but the latter invokes less overhead, and so should be a bit faster. > > Unless you really are conCATenating a chain of files together, most > commands of the form "cat foo | cmd" can be rewritten as "cmd foo" or, > maybe, "cmd < foo". > > > > -- > Chris Devers [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://devers.homeip.net:8080/blog/ > > np: 'It's Not Easy Being Green (lo-fi midi version)' > by Kermit > from 'The Muppet Movie Soundtrack' > > > > > Chris, > > You are exactly right, that is a useless use of cat, old habits die > hard. And of course you are correct in that it can be done entirely in > perl, the availability of the shell cmd wc makes us lazy, and we don't > want to code what we can just call from the system. > > Chris Hood > > > > > -- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > <http://learn.perl.org/> <http://learn.perl.org/first-response> > > > -- It's all a matter of perspective. You can choose your view by choosing where to stand. Larry Wall --- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://learn.perl.org/> <http://learn.perl.org/first-response>
