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From: merlyn@iwarp.intel.com (Randal Schwartz)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: <HANDLE> = @array?
Message-ID: <1990Feb23.190121.2591@iwarp.intel.com>
Date: 23 Feb 90 19:01:21 GMT
References: <15193@bfmny0.UU.NET>
Sender: news@iwarp.intel.com
Reply-To: merlyn@iwarp.intel.com (Randal Schwartz)
Organization: Stonehenge; netaccess via Intel, Beaverton, Oregon, USA
Lines: 45
In-Reply-To: tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff)

In article <15193@bfmny0.UU.NET>, tneff@bfmny0 (Tom Neff) writes:
| Why not allow the inverse of the usage
| 
| 	@array = <FILE>;
| 
| which fills @array with all the lines from the open stream <FILE>,
| and allow
| 
| 	<FILE> = @array;
| 
| which would write all the elements of @array to the open stream <FILE>.
| You can do this now with print and foreach or join, but the symmetry
| would still be nice.

yeah, yeah, and then you could say:

	<FILE1> = <FILE2>

to copy a file!  Nifty!

Just kidding.  What I really meant to say is that this is starting to
look like creaping featurism.  I vote no, especially if it'll delay
"Patch 9 from outer space".  I mean, what's wrong with:
	print FILE @array;
and
	print FILE1 <FILE2>;
for both of those?  Nothing!

What *I'd* really like is a call like `cat file` that gives me the
whole file in one fell swoop without having to start a process.  I'd
also like to capture the output of "write" into a string so I could do
further processing, rather than having to write it to a temp file
(yeah, I came up with a need for this the other day, but worked around
it instead).  But what I'd *really* like is Patch 9. :-)

format STDOUT =
@<<< @<<<<<< @<<< @<<<<<,
$Just, $another, $Perl, $hacker
.
for("Just","another","Perl","hacker"){eval"\$$_=\$_;";};write;
-- 
/=Randal L. Schwartz, Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095 ==========\
| on contract to Intel's iWarp project, Beaverton, Oregon, USA, Sol III      |
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