$ perl -e 'for (1 .. 10) { print("A" x (9000 + $_) . "\n") }' > fil
+e.txt
   
   $ perl -le 'open FOO, "file.txt"; print length $_ for (<FOO>);'
   9002
   9003
   9004
   9005
   9006
   9007
   9008
   9009
   9010
   9011
[download]

What version of Perl are you running? What OS? Can we see the real code, please?

-sam

D'oh. You are right. I thought that the wrapping of the long lines was because of the text editor. I opened up my file in a hex-viewer and that confirmed it - this text file has newlines sprinkled throughout the "long lines". So, now I have to figure out how to parse this file.

I'd like to hear your suggestions. The file is kind of C-code like (but it isn't - it's actually an SVF JTAG Boundary scan file) and looks like this

// comments
some code;
more code;
// more comments
some very long
long long code;
[download]

basically, I want to read in every line that does not begin with a "//" and ends with a ";". Should I just set $/ to ';' and then process the read in strings to drop everything between // and \n?

You can't set the input delimeter unless you know more than you've told us about comment lines.

I'd do something like:

my $full_line = '';
while ( my $line = <FH> )
{
    chomp $line;
    next if substr( $line, 0, 2 ) eq '//';
    $full_line .= " $line"; # space wanted? your call!
    next unless substr( $line, -1, 1 ) eq ';';

    #do something with $full_line
    print "$full_line\n";

    $full_line = '';
}
[download]

Update: replace the $full_line .= line with

    $full_line .= $full_line eq '' ? $line : " $line";
[download]

Update^2: I should have said this has been tested and produced the following with your sample data:

some code;
more code;
some very long long long code;
[download]

Something like this would do it:

my $line = '';
while( <$fh> ) {
    next if m[^//];
    $line .= $_;
    if( $line =~ m[;\Z]m ) {
        ## process line or push ta a array
    }
}
[download]

---

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.

"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".

In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

"Too many [] have been sedated by an oppressive environment of political correctness and risk aversion."

First of all: ++. Then (I wanted to /msg you, but it resulted to be longer than expected, so:)

$ perl -le 'open FOO, "file.txt"; print length $_ for (<FOO>);'
[download]

Ok, they're just ten lines so it doesn't make a difference, but we recommend people all the time not to slurp files in all at once if possible and since we're talking about oneliners anyway, I would rewrite them like thus:

$ perl -le 'print "A" x (9000 + $_) for 1..10' > file.txt

$ perl -lpe '$_=length' file.txt
9001
9002
9003
9004
9005
9006
9007
9008
9009
9010
[download]

Is your data binary by any chance? Perhaps you need binmode?

Are the "lines", more properly, records exactly 8k? eg. 8192 bytes. If so, you might also want to look at setting $\ = \8192;, or using read.

@ARGV = 'x';
print length <>;
#output:
#67831
[download]

This is perl, v5.8.8 built for x86_64-linux-gnu-thread-multi on Debian Testing