I wish to create a script that reads from n files until i have m total unique lines. In order to do this, I would like to use anonymous file handles. my code just gives me warnings which suggest that lines are not being read. can anyone give me a pointer as to what is wrong with my code?
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
my $wantedLines = shift; # number of unique instances wanted

my $numFiles = 0;
my @files = ();
while( my $file = shift)
{
    open $files[$numFiles++], '<', $file or die "can't open $file, $!\
+n";
}

my $totalLines = 0;
my $ct = 0;
my %unique = ();

while($totalLines <= $wantedLines)
{
    my $num = $ct++;
    $num = $num%$numFiles;
    print "$num\n";

    my $this = <$files[$num]>;
    unless(exists $unique{$this})
    {
        print $this;
        $totalLines++;
    }
}

[download]

In reply to reading from an arbitrary number of files using anonymous file handles by downer

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.