Since we're already picking nits and playing reductionists; here's removing a little more redundancy. Hopefully without crossing over and becoming obscure (versions involving map()/grep()-combos deliberately left as an excersice for the reader ;D) 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w

  use strict;

  print "Letter? ";
  my $letter = <STDIN>;   
  chomp $letter;
  open DATA, "books.txt" or die "open(books.txt) returned: $!\n";
  foreach my $line (<DATA>) {
    print $line if $line =~ /^$letter/i;
  }  
  close DATA;

 
 


In reply to Re: Trying to make a search
by link

in thread Trying to make a search
by zdog





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