Something new and twisted they added in perl 5.005. To
quote perldoc perlvar:
Setting $/ to a reference to an integer, scalar
containing an integer, or scalar that's convertable
to an integer will attempt to read records instead
of lines, with the maximum record size being the
referenced integer. So this:
$/ = \32768; # or \"32768", or \$var_containing_32768
open(FILE, $myfile);
$_ = <FILE>;
will read a record of no more than 32768 bytes from
FILE. If you're not reading from a record-oriented
file (or your OS doesn't have record-oriented
files), then you'll likely get a full chunk of data
with every read. If a record is larger than the
record size you've set, you'll get the record back
in pieces.
mikfire