There's a simpler way, if you specify the file from the command line (as in script.pl file) you can do
while (<>) { last if /search test/; #do something } in fact, you can make a cat-like script like this: while (<>) { print; } <> is the diamond operator, and it's the filehandle for standard input (be it keyboard, pipe or file). Hernan Freschi "Jon Serra" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> escribió en el mensaje news:[EMAIL PROTECTED].; > Greetings, I am trying to read a text file into a scalar variable line by line > until EOF or a search test if fullfilled. I have been reading files in like > this: > > chomp (@line = `cat filename`); > > I do not want to do this beacuse my file is quite large, and there is no reason > to hog the memory for the little bit I actually want, and second, I do not want > to make a system call to the unix cat command. TIA Jon -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]