seek question

natxo has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I want to print the first 3 lines of a file. This works:

my $f = "/etc/fstab";
open ( my $fh, "<", $f );

while ( <$fh> ) {
    print if (1..3) ;
}
[download]

But if I print everything, rewind the file to the beginning, and print the first three lines again, it does not work:

my $f = "/etc/fstab";
open ( my $fh, "<", $f );

while ( <$fh> ) {
    chomp;
    print "$_\n";
}

print "=" x 78, "\n\n";
print "after 1st while loop\n";

seek( $fh, 0, 0);

while ( <$fh> ) {
    print if (1..3) ;
}
[download]

using warnings, strict, autodie (implicit in the code).

I can solve it using a counter inside the latest while loop, but I am just curious why it does not work as expected. Thanks for any insights.

Comment on seek question Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: seek question by toolic (Bishop) on Feb 09, 2017 at 20:56 UTC
Add this after your seek: `print "$.\n";` [download] seek does not reset the line number to 0. The Range Operators use $. in this context. Note: `my $` should be `my $f`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: seek question by natxo (Scribe) on Feb 09, 2017 at 21:25 UTC
thanks for spotting my copy/paste error. It's corrected now. And for pointing me in the correct direction, of course.	[reply]
Re: seek question by choroba (Cardinal) on Feb 09, 2017 at 21:02 UTC
See also assign a value to $INPUT_LINE_NUMBER. ($q=q:Sq=~/;[c](.)(.)/;chr(-\|\|-\|5+lengthSq)`"S\|oS2"`map{chr \|+ord }map{substrSq`S_+\|`\|}3E\|-\|`7**2-3:)=~y+S\|`+$1,++print+eval$q,q,a, [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: seek question by stevieb (Canon) on Feb 09, 2017 at 21:05 UTC
oooh, I like the inline method of resetting `$.` that you provided in that thread: `seek $FH, $. = 0, 0;`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: seek question by Anonymous Monk on Feb 10, 2017 at 16:48 UTC
Keep in mind though that the `seek` will fail for streams, named pipes and the like. (/me's thinking of all the kludgy softwares out there e.g. mplayer that couldn't properly read a playlist from a pipe.)	[reply] [d/l]
Re: seek question by stevieb (Canon) on Feb 09, 2017 at 21:01 UTC
I can't say I've ever run across an `if()` statement used as such, I assume that it's doing a `if ($. == 1)` from 1 to 3 implicitly, but I'm unsure. One thing I do know is that seek does not reset the line number variable `$.` when positioning back to the beginning of the file, so you have to set it explicitly: `use warnings; use strict; my $f = "/etc/fstab"; open ( my $fh, "<", $f ); while ( <$fh> ) { print "$.: $_"; } print "=" x 78, "\n\n"; print "after 1st while loop\n"; seek( $fh, 0, 0); # reset line num $. = 0; while ( <$fh> ) { print if (1..3); }` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: seek question by kcott (Archbishop) on Feb 10, 2017 at 06:42 UTC
G'day stevieb, OP wrote: "`... if (1..3) ...`" You wrote: "I can't say I've ever run across an `if()` statement used as such, I assume that it's doing a `if ($. == 1)` from 1 to 3 implicitly, but I'm unsure." From "perlop: Range Operators": "If either operand of scalar `".."` is a constant expression, that operand is considered true if it is equal (`==`) to the current input line number (the `$.` variable)." — Ken	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: seek question by Marshall (Canon) on Feb 09, 2017 at 21:34 UTC
The seek() function deals with bytes. It knows nothing at all about "lines" or line numbers. Of course in this case, you could close the file and then re-open it to reset the $. line counter. I've never had to do that, but it would work.	[reply]
Re^3: seek question by stevieb (Canon) on Feb 09, 2017 at 21:42 UTC
I understand that, but OP was looping over the file handle which does use `$.`. I just meant that `seek()` does not reset this when going back to first row, first column, so that has to be done manually. I concur that closing/re-opening the handle would have the same effect as `$. = 0;`.	[reply] [d/l] [select]