From: jbshaldane@... (haldane)
Date: 2003-02-03T21:53:47+09:00
Subject: Confusion in value of $.

What is going on here?  The value of $. is different depending on
whether the input is coming from a file list or a redirect - see
below:

$ od -c test.txt
0000000   1  \n   2  \n   3  \n   4  \n   5  \n
0000012
$ cat test.rb
p $<.readlines
p $.
$ ruby test.rb test.txt
["1\n", "2\n", "3\n", "4\n", "5\n"]
5
$ ruby test.rb <test.txt
["1\n", "2\n", "3\n", "4\n", "5\n"]
6
$

According to Programming Ruby, the value of $. is the line number of
the last line read from the current input file.  I can't think why the
value should be 6 in the case of the redirect, when there are only 5
lines in the file.

haldane