Revelation wrote: P.S: FYI, this is technique is generally called 'overloading STDIN'. Your searches would have been more successful, even on perlmonks, if you had used the proper vocabulary. :)

Really? What makes you think that?

I took your suggestion and did a Google Groups search for the exact phrase "overloading STDIN." Nothing on c.l.p.misc, c.l.p.modules or perl.qa.

I then Super Searched the monastery archives for that phrase. Had to hit the button at least 5 times. Had to go back to an April 29 2001 posting by chromatic (who else?) , Re: Problem with tie *STDIN, 'IO::Scalar', \$text;, to find a node that had contained both words (albeit separated from each other) and had some relevance.

Now, if I wanted to overcome the problem with the diamond operator, I would certainly have thought in terms of overloading, because operators are what one overloads. And in the node cited above, chromatic does speak of "overloading TIEHANDLE." But I don't think "overloading STDIN" is a phrase that people have commonly used.