Well, the post was all tongue in cheek, but to break character here, the select() idiom was something I came up with one day when I was trying to unbuffer an arbitrary filehandle, regardless of the currently selected filehandle. Since I had invented the literal slice notation, I wondered if that could be used there to eliminate the normal temporary variable by holding the previous handle as part of the constructed list. And boom, there it was.

The problem is that its obscurity offsets any useful gain over just writing it as a normal two or three step process.

Another way to do it without using a "temporary" variable might be something like: 

for (select(HANDLETOUNBUFFER)) {
  $|++;
  select($_);
}

[download]
But I'd argue this is just as obscure.

Moral of the story: it's ok to say my $old = select(NEW); when you need the old handle. It's fine. Don't worry. Be happy.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.

In reply to •Re: Re^2: Tear it apart...select() by merlyn
in thread Tear it apart...select() by snafu

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.