Well, the first question is "How would you do this in any arbitrary computer language?" The second is "How do you expect to insert a record into a file without writing into it?"

There are numerous ways of doing this in Perl: localize $/, and slurp the file in as one chunk, and read the file into an array, and read the file a line at a time, and either write the modified file as a temp file and use rename to overwrite the old file or use the -i option to edit it in place. You could also use Tie::File, although that seems to some of the aesthetics of using a sledgehammer to kill a gnat.

Information about American English usage here and here. Floating point issues? Please read this before posting. — emc

In reply to Re: Inserting a line in the middle of a text by swampyankee
in thread Inserting a line in the middle of a text by goude

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.