Another difference not mentioned by the estemed monks above:
while (<FH>) {...}
assigns a line to $_ on each iteration of the loop, as mentioned, however
outside a loop it does not. Just plain
<FH>;
does read a line from the file, but does not assign it to $_. So far as I know it is not stored. The assignment to $_ is magic that only occurs inside the condition of a
while loop.
$line = <FH>; works as expected - the line which has been read is assigned to
$line.
By the way, if you use
sysread the you should open with
sysopen, but there is also
read which is used after our old friend
open. With
read you can specify how many characters to read, which can also be done with $/ (although I find
read easier to um, read).
