Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!brunix!jsb
From: jsb@cs.brown.edu (John Bazik)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: funky filehandle
Message-ID: <45087@brunix.UUCP>
Date: 16 Jul 90 17:48:29 GMT
Sender: news@brunix.UUCP
Reply-To: jsb@cs.brown.edu (John Bazik)
Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science
Lines: 47

Here's a funny thing.  I have a short script and a package it utilizes:

script...

	#!/cs/bin/perl

	do 'tfio.pl' || die "tfio.pl: ($@)";

	if (&f_open(*F, '/tmp/xxx')) {
		($dev,$ino,$mode,$nlink,$uid,$gid,$rdev,$size) = stat(F);
		print "stat uid $uid gid $gid size $size\n";
		print "/tmp/xxx is okay\n";
		print "but eof\n" if eof(F);
	}
	else {
		print "/tmp/xxx nogood\n";
	}

	while (<F>) {
		print "<$_>\n";
	}

package...

	package tfio;

	sub main'f_open {
		local(*F,$file) = @_;

		if (open(F, $file)) {
			return 1;
		}
		else {
			print "cannot open $file\n";
		}
		return 0;
	}

	1;

Now, this works perfectly.  But if I comment out the while loop, the stat
fails to return anything and the eof(F) is true (though the file contains
two lines).  Why does the file have to be read to stat?  I'm relatively
new to perl, so please help me out if I'm totally off base.

John Bazik
jsb@cs.brown.edu