Re^2: perl one-liner doesn't autochomp input

$ ls | perl -l72pe1

This works and seems equivalent to

$ ls | perl -l72pe "{}"

But I don't understand the role of "1" (or digits in general) at the end of the command line, and I can't find any explanation in perlrun. I thought that they might affect the way that arguments are processed, but that doesn't seem right. Can someone clarify?

Thanks,
--John

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Re^3: perl one-liner doesn't autochomp input by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Sep 07, 2004 at 18:16 UTC
The 1 is there because you have to supply some Perl code to `-e`, but in this case you don't care to do anything, you just want the side effects of the other switches. Using a 1 by itself as your "script" is just like having `1;` on a line by itself in a script — it does nothing. This can be used for such funny command lines as `perl -please textfile # print the contents of the textfile perl -deal # fire up the debugger for interactive fiddling` [download] These are equivalent to `perl -p -l -e '"ase"' textfile perl -d -e '"al"'` [download] where you simply have a string on a line by itself as the only statement in your "code", resulting in a no-op. Makeshifts last the longest.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: perl one-liner doesn't autochomp input by Anonymous Monk on Sep 07, 2004 at 13:05 UTC
`perl -neprint /etc/passwd` [download]	[reply] [d/l]