Fellow monks:

I have a sub-routine that parses a list of files and returns a data structure. I'd like to write a unix-style filter that takes either a list of files from STDIN or a filename(s) on the command line and feeds the list into the sub. The angle operator (<>) looks like the way to go, but I've got a question regarding it's use.

I'm using the following to do this:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

while ( <> ) {
    ...
}
[download]

Doing the following:

ls *.txt | my_script.pl
[download]

sticks each file from the ls into $_, allowing me to create a list of files for the sub, but the following:

my_script.pl text.txt
[download]

opens the file(s) and reads it line by line, placing each line into $_, which is not what I want. I like to be able to feed @ARGV right into my sub.

So I wrote the following to create the list of files if the user specifies them on the command line:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my @files;
if ( @ARGV ) {
    @files = map { -f $_ ? $_ : () } @ARGV;
}
else {
    while ( <> ) {
        chomp;
        push @files, $_;
    }
}
[download]

Is this a clean way to do this (I know, I know: TMTOWTDI) or is there a better way?

njcodewarrior

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