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$var .= $_; what it mean?

perl1006
New User

Sep 4, 2006, 4:16 AM

Post #1 of 4 (1519 views)

$var .= $_; what it mean?	Can't Post

hi,

any body can tellme what is assigned to the variable in the following code.

open (IN,"./template.html");
while (<IN>){
$var .= $_;
}
close IN;

in the above code open function takes the template files into IN
but i can't unserstand the expr
$var .= $_;

can any body tell me what is the meaning of the above line.

Thanks
Kanth

KevinR
Veteran

Sep 4, 2006, 1:07 PM

Post #2 of 4 (1515 views)

Re: [perl1006] $var .= $_; what it mean? [In reply to]	Can't Post

.= (dot equal) is the concatenation assingment operator. Each value of $_ is added to (concatenated onto) the end of $var. In your code, $_ is the value or each read of the filehandle being read in the <> operator. That value is added to $var until the end of the file is reached.
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davorg
Thaumaturge / Moderator

Sep 5, 2006, 7:55 AM

Post #3 of 4 (1509 views)

Re: [perl1006] $var .= $_; what it mean? [In reply to]	Can't Post

KevinR has given you the literal translation of the code. But what he hasn't told you is the "real" meaning of that code - which is that the person who wrote it really didn't know what they were doing.

What you're trying to do here is to read in the contents of a file into a scalar variable. The person who wrote this knows that the default behaviour of the file input operator is to return a single row when called in scalar context. But he didn't know how to get round that either by a) calling it in list context:

Code

$var = join '', <IN>;

Or by changing its default "line at a time" behaviour:

Code

$var = do { local $/; <IN>; }

I'd be very loathe to trust any Perl code written by the person who wrote that snippet.

--
Dave Cross, Perl Hacker, Trainer and Writer
http://www.dave.org.uk/
Get more help at Perl Monks

KevinR
Veteran

Sep 5, 2006, 12:49 PM

Post #4 of 4 (1507 views)

Re: [davorg] $var .= $_; what it mean? [In reply to]	Can't Post

Quote

But what he hasn't told you is the "real" meaning of that code - ....

Sounds like the plot for a book..... Cool

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