Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucla-cs!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jpl-devvax!lwall
From: lwall@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Fall-through exit does not close files.
Message-ID: <1991Mar16.013304.1335@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov>
Date: 16 Mar 91 01:33:04 GMT
References: <21156@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 25

In article <21156@shlump.nac.dec.com> prakash@aiag.enet.dec.com writes:
: I had a perl script in which I opened a file thus
: 
: open(FOO, "| filter");
: 
: and then did a bunch of writes to FOO. My script exited by just
: falling through the end, and the output never got to the filter. 
: Finally, I put a
: 
: close(FOO);
: 
: at the end of the script, and it worked. Should all filehandles be closed 
: before exiting?

Ordinarily you don't need to do that, unless you want the Perl script to
wait for your filter to complete.  I just did

    open(FOO,"| (sleep 15; cat)");
    print FOO "howdy\n";

and it worked fine falling off the end of the script.  I can't imagine why
yours wouldn't work unless you've got #define exit _exit somewhere.
Ordinarily C's exit() will flush stdio buffers for you.

Larry