in reply to what is the return value
Firstly, it's broken. The # marks a comment, so the closing } will be ignored and break the code.
Looking at:
Line 2: (from right to left)
shift: gets the first parameter passed to the sub
$in: is just a variable
my $in: says $in only exists in this sub
open: open a file. In this case the file name is the first parameter to the sub, and $in becomes the handle
line 3: &&: A logical-and ensure that if the file open fails, the next command will be skipped.
return: return the following data
line 4: scalar: tells perl to think of the next 'thing' as a single line of text.
<$in>: read from the file handle. Combined with the 'scalar' instruction will get just one line.
line 5: a comment noting that the file is automatically closed when the $in filehandle 'dissapears' at the end of the sub.
line 6: ending the sub.
So.. Line 2 opens a file. Line 4 gets a single line of text and Line 3 returns that single line.
Try reading http://perldoc.perl.org/perlopentut.html and other tutorials.
line 1: starting a new sub called 'firstline'1 sub firstline { 2 open( my $in, shift ) 3 && return 4 scalar <$in>; 5 # no close() required 6 }
Line 2: (from right to left)
shift: gets the first parameter passed to the sub
$in: is just a variable
my $in: says $in only exists in this sub
open: open a file. In this case the file name is the first parameter to the sub, and $in becomes the handle
line 3: &&: A logical-and ensure that if the file open fails, the next command will be skipped.
return: return the following data
line 4: scalar: tells perl to think of the next 'thing' as a single line of text.
<$in>: read from the file handle. Combined with the 'scalar' instruction will get just one line.
line 5: a comment noting that the file is automatically closed when the $in filehandle 'dissapears' at the end of the sub.
line 6: ending the sub.
So.. Line 2 opens a file. Line 4 gets a single line of text and Line 3 returns that single line.
Try reading http://perldoc.perl.org/perlopentut.html and other tutorials.
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