Ack! Learn a lesson from my own mistake and use constants instead of strings for $expect (note the typo "eyecater"). I was being lazy :-(

Also, the pseudocode doesn't handle the case of the file not beginning with "==", which you could handle in the first else like so: else { die "expected eyecatcher" unless $expect eq 'eyecatcher' }.

If the logic starts getting too complex, get a little more verbose and break the first if up: if ($expect eq 'eyecatcher') {} elsif ($expect eq 'eyecatcher_after_record') {} and so on. Always cover all branches; at the very least throw a else { die "unexpected" } on there during development.

And choosing the right names for your states helps a lot. For example, "eyecatcher" might be better named "first_eyecatcher".

In reply to Re^2: Reading binary file in perl having records of different length by Anonymous Monk
in thread Reading binary file in perl having records of different length by jaypal

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