Not entirely true. As written here, the two are equivalent. Mr. Wheelers
version is simply an implied while loop. Both will read every line of a
file until an EOF is reached. Both are subject to problems if the files
are very large. You could argue that both methods read the file in pieces,
where piece = line, however both will suck up the files in their entirety.
The one advantage of the first method might be if you were looking for a
particular token in the file being read, or only wanted to read to a
specific point. You could then insert logic to exit the loop and thereby
abort your read before the whole file was traversed.
"Ward W. Vuillemot" wrote:
> On 2002.08.10, at 08:54, David Wheeler wrote:
>
> > On Saturday, August 10, 2002, at 12:43 AM, Shannon Murdoch wrote:
> >
> >> while(<FILE>){
> >> push (@array,$_);
> >> }
> >
> > This doesn't answer your question, but just as a space saver (perhaps
> > even optimization, I'm not sure), you might want to try this syntax:
> >
> > my @array = <FILE>;
>
> Q: What happens if <FILE> is a LARGE file? @array = <FILE> may then
> cause problems...the first way ensures that the file is read in
> pieces....
>
> Anyone have comments?
