From: mike@... (Mike Stok)
Date: 2002-02-22T03:58:56+09:00
Subject: Re: Perl IO to Ruby IO help needed

In article <3c752a18_2@spamkiller.newsgroups.com>, Sean Russell wrote:
><posted & mailed>
> 
> Craig Files wrote:
> 
>> open (DEF, "<$input_def") || die "$0: cannot read $input_def\n";
>> $/ = undef;           # read the entire file...
>> $_ = <DEF>;           # ...into memory
>> close(DEF);
> 
> Tobias and Mike both gave you nice examples with exception handling; in the 
> most simple, direct from perl translation:
> 
>   lines = IO.readlines(input_def)
> 
> This does everything you do in your perl code; it dies (with an exception) 
> if there is an error, and (AFAIK) the stream is automatically closed after 
> reading.  It's also only one line long, and much easier to understand :-)

But it returns an array of \n terminated strings in lines rather than the 
whole content of whatever's named in input_def as a single string. (It refers
to the IO.readlines example above).

Whether that is an important difference to the original poster I don't know,
but to steal your clarity...

  content = File.open(input_def).read

might be closer?

Mike

P.S. in perl it might be kinder & gentler to localise the modification to $/
if the program were bigger tahn a few lines...

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