read a few lines, put them into named variables

On IRC a short while back, someone wanted to read precisely 13 lines repeatedly. While a few idioms were tossed around, I stumbled on the one I present here, and it was just too cool not to share with y'all. Enjoy!

$_ = <STDIN> for
  $one, $two, $three, $four, $five;
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Re: read a few lines, put them into named variables by merlyn (Sage) on Dec 15, 2000 at 07:16 UTC
And just to go a bit further, check this out: `{ defined($_ = <STDIN>) or last for my ($one, $two, $three, $four, $five); .. process all five lines .. redo; }` [download] This aborts if we ever get less than five lines, and declares them all at once! Cool! For example, alternating lines of key/value pairs: `{ defined($_ = <STDIN>) or last for my ($key, $value); $hash{$key} = $value; redo; }` [download] And if there's an odd number lines, we don't execute that code for that last line. -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: read a few lines, put them into named variables by robsv (Curate) on Feb 22, 2001 at 01:43 UTC
merlyn, This is very cool! I did run into one small quirk in the key/value pair example - it doesn't stop (I think because the last drops out of the for, not the loop block). I got it to work as: `LOOP: { defined($_ = <STDIN>) or last LOOP for my($key,$value); chomp($key,$value); $hash{$key} = $value; redo; }` [download] I guess the chomp really isn't necessary, but I wanted to ditch the newlines. Thanks! - robsv	[reply] [d/l]