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From: merlyn@agora.UUCP (Randal L. Schwartz)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Filenames with leading spaces in Perl (was Re: perl question about > in file name)
Message-ID: <1544@agora.UUCP>
Date: 12 Jun 89 01:03:19 GMT
References: <5058@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> <1537@agora.UUCP>
Organization: Organization?  You've got to be kidding!
Lines: 21

In article <1537@agora.UUCP> batie@agora.UUCP (Alan Batie) writes:
| From article <5058@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>, by lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall):
| > Actually, it suffices to put a space after the first >, as in "> >a".
| > Of course, this means you can't easily create a filename starting with spaces,
| > but why would you want to do that anyway?
| 
| Although I agree with Larry in this case, the question "Why would you want to
| do that anyway?" is usually followed by someone finding a good reason to do
| so, and I consider it a very dangerous question.

Well, beating them to the punch, you *can* create a filename beginning
with a space the hard way, with:

   open(F,"> ./ foo") || die;

so there.

Just another satisfied Perl hacker (thanks larry!),
-- Randal L. Schwartz, Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095
quality software, documentation, and training at affordable rates
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