On page 667 of the 3rd Edition of "Programming Perl", in the description of the record separator variable, it says: "Record mode mixes well with line mode only on systems where standard I/O supplies a read(3) function..."

I do not understant what the author means by "mixing" record mode and line mode. Either you read a file x bytes at a time, or you read it one line at a time,by whatever you want to call a line with the record separator, right? Am I missing something here? Is it possible to say, read up to 4096 bytes at a time, or up to a newline, whichever comes first by assigning a value to the $/ variable?

If I say $/=\128, does that literally mean read the file 128 bytes at a time, or something else?

I greatly appreciate any help in clearing this up,

tigervamp

In reply to the Record Separator Variable by tigervamp

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