in reply to desire to pass file handles by value

I think you *need* to rewind the file by calling seek FH, 0, 0; in the subroutine find.

The file operation in Perl is ultimately linked to the underlying unix file handles. When you read from a Perl file handle, Perl uses and updates the underlying unix file handle, thus giving the side effect.

I think ideally you are looking for the Perl's equivalent to the C stdio's dup function, to duplicate/copy an existing file handle into a new file handle (not just an alias to the existing file handle, but a new independent file handle), and operate on the second file handle in the subroutine. I am not aware of such facility in Perl 5 (my lack of research perhaps), but I think Perl 6 has implimented the dup function for the File Object.

Update:
Ok, I just learned that you can duplicate a file handle in Perl with open NEW, "<&OLD";. I quickly came up with the following code - 

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

sub find {
    local *IN = shift;
    my $find_me = shift;
    my $count   = 0;

    # duplicate existing file handle
    open F2, '<&', *IN or die "Can not duplicate file handle";
    my $tell = tell(F2);
    while (<F2>) {
        $count++ if (/$find_me/);
    }

    return "count: $count tell: $tell\n";
    close F2;
}

open OUT, '>', 'tmp.txt' or die "$!\n";
print OUT while (<DATA>);
close OUT or die "$!\n";

open IN, 'tmp.txt' or die "$!\n";

print find( *IN, 'a' );
print find( *IN, 'a' );
print find( *IN, 'd' );
print find( *IN, 'e' );

__DATA__
a
a
a
c
d
e

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The output is still -
#count: 3 tell: 0
#count: 0 tell: 13
#count: 0 tell: 13
#count: 0 tell: 13

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That didn't work either! Ok, that taught me a lession - my assumption on the duplicated file handle could be wrong. I need some re-education.

Fellow monks, could you please tell me what is wrong with the duplicated file handle? Is perl actually creating a second independent file handle? Am I doing the right thing at all?

Thanks!

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Re: Re: desire to pass file handles by value
by mandog (Curate) on Nov 07, 2003 at 03:47 UTC

    Thanks for the help. For now, I'm going to record the orignal file position on entry to the sub & restore it on exit. 

    #...
my $pos=tell(FH);
#...
seek(FH,$pos,0);
return

    [download]

    The file handle duplicating thing looks interesting though...

    update: fixed dumb semantic error



    email: mandog
[reply]
[d/l]
      Now if only you could localize a variable that represents the file position, you wouldn't have to manually save/restore its value. Hmmm.... 
          package Tie::Scalar::FHPos;
    use FileHandle;
    sub TIESCALAR
    {
        my( $pkg, $fh ) = @_;
        bless [$fh], $pkg;
    }
    sub FETCH
    {
        my( $self ) = @_;
        $self->[0]->tell
    }
    sub STORE
    {
        my( $self, $pos ) = @_;
        $self->[0]->seek($pos,0);
    }

      [download]
      Test: 
      open F, "< foo.dat";
our $pos;
tie $pos, 'Tie::Scalar::FHPos', \*F;

{
 local $pos = 20;
 print "$pos: ", scalar(<F>);
}
print "$pos: ", scalar(<F>);

      [download]
      Cool!

      jdporter
      The 6th Rule of Perl Club is -- There is no Rule #6.

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
        Nice. It does have negative one side effect, though. If you are reading from some other file (say <STDIN>), and you reference $pos, the tell or seek will change perl's idea of the most recent input file to F. This will mess up the "<STDIN> line n" in any error/warning message, and also change what handle the $. var is looked up in.

        To fix this, put a local $.; in STORE and FETCH. (For some reason, this then triggers some warnings from STORE when $pos is localized. Fix by saying seek($pos||0,0)).

        If you are downvoting this for other than lack of interest, thanks for sending me a message or reply to let me know why so I can do better (or just stay quiet) next time.

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
Re: Re: desire to pass file handles by value
by nevyn (Monk) on Nov 07, 2003 at 09:11 UTC
    Update: Ok, I just learned that you can duplicate a file handle in Perl with open NEW, "<&OLD";. I quickly came up with the following code -

    From a Linux man page...

    After successful return of dup or dup2, the old and new descriptors may be used interchangeably. They share locks, file position pointers and flags; for example, if the file position is modified by using lseek on one of the descriptors, the position is also changed for the other.
    --
    James Antill
[reply]
Re: Re: desire to pass file handles by value
by Anonymous Monk on Nov 07, 2003 at 07:27 UTC
    The file operation in Perl is ultimately linked to the underlying unix file handles. When you read from a Perl file handle, Perl uses and updates the underlying unix file handle, thus giving the side effect.
    Well not on windows, or other non-unix operating systems ....
[reply]

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