Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jpl-devvax!lwall
From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Reading a file into a string
Message-ID: <11242@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 31 Jan 91 00:42:15 GMT
References: <97130172@bfmny0.BFM.COM> <11235@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> <97130173@bfmny0.BFM.COM> <120644@uunet.UU.NET>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 49

In article <120644@uunet.UU.NET> rbj@uunet.UU.NET (Root Boy Jim) writes:
: OK, so Larry was being too literal.

I'm like that sometimes.  It started at an early age, when my mom told me
to hop in the bathtub.

: Suppose we replace -s FILE with $MAXINT?
: Sysread will get whatever it can. However, this begs the question,
: how does $foo get allocated? By sending the third arg to malloc?

Noises of affirmation.

: In that case, perhaps one should set a limit on how much they slurp
: and die/complain on therwise.

Perhaps one should, as long as they aren't Perl.  Any limit Perl might set
would be too small for some people and too large for others.

: This would also be a good time to ask about args to ioctls. I have
: been precreating them out of paranoia:
: $sgtty = 'ioekfl'; ioctl(FH,$TIOCGETP,$sgtty);
: Is this necessary? In either case, why?

Never necessary on a BSD-derived system, and seldom necessary on other systems.
$TIOCGETP encodes the required length of $sgtty on BSD systems, so it
preallocates that much for you.  On non-BSD systems it preallocates 256
bytes, so you only have to preallocate it if you're expecting more info
back than that.  It also adds a sentinel byte at the end so it can die
gracefully when you blow it.

fcntl works the same way.

syscall does nothing for you by way of pre-extension.

: (6) $"=''; @str = <FILE>; $str = "@str";
: (7) @str = <FILE>; $str = join(//,"@str");
: 
: Horshoe mode .signature: perl -e 'print "Just another $0 hacker,"'

That may not do what you expect.

You might be interested to know that 4.0 will allow you to assign to $0 to
modify what ps sees.  (Suggested by Tom Christiansen.)

die "shucks" if $] < 4.000;
$0 = 'Just another Perl hacker,';
print grep(s/.*Just/Not just/, `ps`);

Larry