$bytesread doesn't do anything and should be skipped. My thought is that if the read doesn't get anything, having that "nothing" assigned to bytesread will cause the conditional to evaluate as true and while will write to the file regardless of the success of read.

Yes and no. Yes, $bytesread is useless. No, it doesn't change the meaning of the conditional.

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")