What is function of a filehandle read operation operation when no filehandle is specified?

princepawn has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

use Parse::RecDescent;

local $/;
my $grammar = <DATA>;
my $parser = Parse::RecDescent->new($grammar);

my $text = <>; # <------ Line in Question

parser->translation_unit($text) or die "bad C code";
[download]

Comment on What is function of a filehandle read operation operation when no filehandle is specified? Download Code

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Re: What is function of a filehandle read operation by BlueLines (Hermit) on Aug 07, 2000 at 23:25 UTC
Actually, the null file handle "magically gives you all the lines from all the file mentioned on the command line. If no files were mentioned, it gives you standard input instead." -from the camel book, page 54 BlueLines Disclaimer: This post may contain inaccurate information, be habit forming, cause atomic warfare between peaceful countries, speed up male pattern baldness, interfere with your cable reception, exile you from certain third world countries, ruin your marriage, and generally spoil your day. No batteries included, no strings attached, your mileage may vary.	[reply]
Re: What is function of a filehandle read operation by cwest (Friar) on Aug 07, 2000 at 23:21 UTC
I'm not sure what your question is, but if you want to know what that does... it reads from `STDIN` `perl -ne print # equal to perl -e 'while (<>){print}'` [download] Oh.. it also checks the files on the command line... (which is probably how you're using it anyhow) Enjoy! -- Casey	[reply] [d/l]
RE: Re: What is function of a filehandle read operation by merlyn (Sage) on Aug 08, 2000 at 01:31 UTC
It reads from `STDIN` only when there are no entries in `@ARGV`. So, you're partially right, but wrong if there are command line arguments. -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker	[reply]
Re: What is function of a filehandle read operation operation when no filehandle is specified? by takshaka (Friar) on Aug 08, 2000 at 01:19 UTC
And for those who don't own the Camel, this behavior is described in the I/O Operators section of the perlop manpage.	[reply]