Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!lll-winken!uunet!bfmny0!tneff
From: tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Reading a file into a string
Message-ID: <97130173@bfmny0.BFM.COM>
Date: 30 Jan 91 01:09:22 GMT
References: <1991Jan30.005821.13013@convex.com> <97130172@bfmny0.BFM.COM> <11235@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Reply-To: tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff)
Lines: 34

Sorry to requote all 5, but Allah forbid someone gets this out of order :-)

In article <11235@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall) writes:
|In article <97130172@bfmny0.BFM.COM> tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) writes:
|: In article <1991Jan30.005821.13013@convex.com> tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) writes:
|: >1) $foo = `cat $file`;
|: >
|: >2) open (FILE, $file);
|: >   undef $/;
|: >   $foo = <FILE>;
|: >   close(FILE);
|: 
|: 3)  open (FILE, $file); $foo = ''; 
|:     while (!eof(FILE)) { read(FILE, $x, 32767); $foo .= $x;};
|: 
|: You can use bigger numbers than 32767...
|
|You sure can, including the size of the file:
|
|4) open(FILE, $file); read(FILE, $foo, -s $file);
|
|or better in two ways,
|
|5) open(FILE, $file); sysread(FILE, $foo, -s FILE);
|
|I sincerely doubt that any other construct is going to beat that, 
|timewise.  ...

However, 4) and 5) don't work on pipes, named or unnamed.  1) works on 
named pipes but not unnamed.  Only 2) and 3) work everywhere.

-- 
Annex Canada now!  We need the room,    \)      Tom Neff
    and who's going to stop us.         (\      tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM