Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!lll-winken!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jpl-devvax!lwall
From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Strange file-opening problem with perl 3.0@44
Message-ID: <11217@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 29 Jan 91 17:30:30 GMT
References: <142743@pyramid.pyramid.com>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 25

In article <142743@pyramid.pyramid.com> mfrost@sword.pyramid.com (Mark Frost) writes:
: # Set host-specific configfile name
: #	Config file name is $thishost + ".config"
: $hostconfigfile = "configs/". $thishost . ".config";
: 
: 	open(HOSTFILE, "$hostconfigfile" || die "Can't open $hostconfigfile\n");

But $hostconfigfile is always true, so the die will never happen.  You want:

    open(HOSTFILE, "$hostconfigfile") || die "Can't open $hostconfigfile: $!\n";

Put the closing paren in the right place and use $! to tell you why it
thought it couldn't open the file in question (probably because $thishost
got mangled somehow).

Without seeing &gethostname I couldn't tell you why pl44 might mangle
$thishost.  My first guess would be, however, that you said the equivalent of

	$thishost = `hostname`;

and forgot to chop the newline.

Larry