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From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: STDIN waits for ^D, not newline
Message-ID: <8044@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 9 May 90 23:12:29 GMT
References: <5249@crltrx.crl.dec.com>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 28

In article <5249@crltrx.crl.dec.com> halbert@crl.dec.com writes:
: However, if you try:
: 
: print "prompt: ";
: local ($a) = <STDIN>;
: print $a;
: 
: then STDIN keeps reading input until I type ^D.
: 
: In my program, the local() is in a subroutine, of course, but that isn't
: necessary to reproduce the problem.

This is because local is really just a modifier on a list lvalue, so
you're really doing the same as the following:

	local($a);
	($a) = <STDIN>;

Since ($a) is a list, the <STDIN> is being evaluated in an array context,
and returning the entire file.

You could force a scalar context by concatenating a null string, but it's
probably more efficient to separate it out thusly:

	local($a);
	$a = <STDIN>;

Larry