Friends,

I am trying to write a simple script that I could use while editting files with vi. One of the things I like about vi is that you can do things like :1,$ !program. Here's a demostration of what I want to be able to do ...

bash-2.05b$ vi junk

NOTES
doc
backup
notes
scripts
cpio_out
bashrc
~
~
~
:1,$ !sort
backup
bashrc
cpio_out
doc
notes
NOTES
scripts
:wq
[download]

In the above example I used sort to modify my file. I want to be able to do this with this script ...

bash-2.05b$ cat twc
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
 
my $file = shift;
if ( !defined( $file ) ) {
        print "usage: $0 <dir|file>\n";
        exit 0;
}

if ( ! -e $file ) {
        print  "#$file\n";
} else {
        print "$file\n";
}
[download]

... but when I do something like this ...

bash-2.05b$ vi junk
backup
bashrc
cpio_out
doc
notes
NOTES
scripts
~
~
~
:1,$ !./twc
[download]

... I get this ...

usage: ./twc <dir|file>
[download]

How should I be handling the input in my Perl script?