in reply to Re^3: perl -pi -e s'/^\s+//'g $file
in thread perl -pi -e s'/^\s+//'g $file

Actually you'd need

local @ARGV = @_; require ARGV::readonly; ARGV::readonly->import; ## THIS!!!

But if you're going to write all that, which might confuse some, you might as well just steal ARGV::readonly verbatim

local @ARGV = @_; # Tom Christiansen in Message-ID: <24692.1217339882@chthon> # reccomends essentially the following: for (@ARGV){ s/^(\s+)/.\/$1/; # leading whitespace preserved s/^/< /; # force open for input $_.=qq/\0/; # trailing whitespace preserved & pipes forbidden };