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From: grady@scam.Berkeley.EDU (Steven Grady)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Need $? for open()
Keywords: new feature request
Message-ID: <23449@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 27 Mar 90 07:08:11 GMT
Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU
Reply-To: grady@postgres.berkeley.edu
Organization: Experimental Computing Facility, UC Berkeley
Lines: 23

I have a perl program which starts another process and reads
the input, using open().  Specifially, the relevant part of the
code looks something like:

	open(RLOG, "rlog $files |") || die "rlog: $@";
	while (<RLOG>) {
	    ...
	}

The problem is that I don't find out if there's an error.  What
would be really useful is for the "$?" variable (or something
like it) to be set to the status of the program when it exits.
Currently, $? is only set by backquoted programs, wait(), and
system().  Is there any possibility of adding generic open'ed
commands to this list, or at least some mechanism to provide
similar functionality?
--
	Steven
	grady@postgres.berkeley.edu
	...!ucbvax!grady

"Shall we go down and give blood?"
"Oh, I don't want a great bat flapping round my neck."