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