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From: brossard@sic.epfl.ch (Alain Brossard EPFL-SIC/SII)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: print <FILE>;
Message-ID: <1268@sicsun.epfl.ch>
Date: 7 Apr 91 10:14:19 GMT
Sender: news@sicsun.epfl.ch
Lines: 35


	There is a feature which has just bitten me and made me
lose a lot of hours and I think the man page should reflect
this.  When doing:

   print NEW <FILE>;
   
	It not only prints the next line of FILE as
I wanted but prints all the rest of FILE.  There is a paragraph in
the 4.000 man page which relates to this (I think):

     If a <FILEHANDLE> is used in a context that is  looking  for
     an  array,  an  array  consisting  of all the input lines is
     returned, one line per array element.  It's easy to  make  a
     LARGE data space this way, so use with care.

   At least that is what I think it says, this is what I would
call a feature in the bad sense of the word!  Isn't Perl
cryptic enough?  Anyway I suggest adding:

	print <STDIN>;

   in the paragraph that says that all the following are equivalent:

         while ($_ = <STDIN>) { print; }
         while (<STDIN>) { print; }
         for (;<STDIN>;) { print; }
         print while $_ = <STDIN>;
         print while <STDIN>;

   I wanted to do print $_, <FILE>, <FILE>;  and I had to do:
print $_ =  <FILE>; print $_ = <FILE>;
   The fact that I need to do an assignment seems counter intuitive!

				Alain Brossard