The null filehandle <> is special: it can be used to emulate the
behavior of sed and awk. Input from <> comes either from standard
input, or from each file listed on the command line. Here’s how it
works: the first time <> is evaluated, the @ARGV array is checked, and
if it is empty, $ARGV[0] is set to "-", which when opened gives you
standard input. The @ARGV array is then processed as a list of
filenames. The loop
while (<>) {
... # code for each line
}
is equivalent to the following Perl-like pseudo code:
unshift(@ARGV, '-') unless @ARGV;
while ($ARGV = shift) {
open(ARGV, $ARGV);
while (<ARGV>) {
... # code for each line
}
}
Cheers Rolf
( addicted to the Perl Programming Language)
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