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PERLFAQ5(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLFAQ5(1)
NAME
perlfaq5 - Files and Formats ($Revision: 10126 $)
DESCRIPTION
This section deals with I/O and the "f" issues: filehandles, flushing, formats, and footers.
How do I flush/unbuffer an output filehandle? Why must I do this?
Perl does not support truly unbuffered output (except insofar as you can "syswrite(OUT, $char, 1)"),
although it does support is "command buffering", in which a physical write is performed after every
output command.
The C standard I/O library (stdio) normally buffers characters sent to devices so that there isn't a
system call for each byte. In most stdio implementations, the type of output buffering and the size
of the buffer varies according to the type of device. Perl's "print()" and "write()" functions nor-mally normally
mally buffer output, while "syswrite()" bypasses buffering all together.
If you want your output to be sent immediately when you execute "print()" or "write()" (for instance,
for some network protocols), you must set the handle's autoflush flag. This flag is the Perl variable
$| and when it is set to a true value, Perl will flush the handle's buffer after each "print()" or
"write()". Setting $| affects buffering only for the currently selected default filehandle. You
choose this handle with the one argument "select()" call (see "$|" in perlvar and "select" in perl-func). perlfunc).
func).
Use "select()" to choose the desired handle, then set its per-filehandle variables.
$old_fh = select(OUTPUT_HANDLE);
$| = 1;
select($old_fh);
Some modules offer object-oriented access to handles and their variables, although they may be
overkill if this is the only thing you do with them. You can use "IO::Handle":
use IO::Handle;
open my( $printer ), ">", "/dev/printer"); # but is this?
$printer->autoflush(1);
or "IO::Socket" (which inherits from "IO::Handle"):
use IO::Socket; # this one is kinda a pipe?
my $sock = IO::Socket::INET->new( 'www.example.com:80' );
$sock->autoflush();
You can also flush an "IO::Handle" object without setting "autoflush". Call the "flush" method to
flush the buffer yourself:
use IO::Handle;
open my( $printer ), ">", "/dev/printer");
$printer->flush; # one time flush
How do I change, delete, or insert a line in a file, or append to the beginning of a file?
(contributed by brian d foy)
The basic idea of inserting, changing, or deleting a line from a text file involves reading and
printing the file to the point you want to make the change, making the change, then reading and
printing the rest of the file. Perl doesn't provide random access to lines (especially since the
record input separator, $/, is mutable), although modules such as "Tie::File" can fake it.
A Perl program to do these tasks takes the basic form of opening a file, printing its lines, then
closing the file:
open my $in, '<', $file or die "Can't read old file: $!";
open my $out, '>', "$file.new" or die "Can't write new file: $!";
while( <$in> )
{
print $out $_;
}
close $out;
Within that basic form, add the parts that you need to insert, change, or delete lines.
To prepend lines to the beginning, print those lines before you enter the loop that prints the exist-ing existing
ing lines.
open my $in, '<', $file or die "Can't read old file: $!";
open my $out, '>', "$file.new" or die "Can't write new file: $!";
print "# Add this line to the top\n"; # <--- HERE'S THE MAGIC
while( <$in> )
{
print $out $_;
}
close $out;
To change existing lines, insert the code to modify the lines inside the "while" loop. In this case,
the code finds all lowercased versions of "perl" and uppercases them. The happens for every line, so
be sure that you're supposed to do that on every line!
open my $in, '<', $file or die "Can't read old file: $!";
open my $out, '>', "$file.new" or die "Can't write new file: $!";
print "# Add this line to the top\n";
while( <$in> )
{
s/\b(perl)\b/Perl/g;
print $out $_;
}
close $out;
To change only a particular line, the input line number, $., is useful. First read and print the
lines up to the one you want to change. Next, read the single line you want to change, change it,
and print it. After that, read the rest of the lines and print those:
while( <$in> ) # print the lines before the change
{
print $out $_;
last if $. == 4; # line number before change
}
my $line = <$in>;
$line =~ s/\b(perl)\b/Perl/g;
print $out $line;
while( <$in> ) # print the rest of the lines
{
print $out $_;
}
To skip lines, use the looping controls. The "next" in this example skips comment lines, and the
"last" stops all processing once it encounters either "__END__" or "__DATA__".
while( <$in> )
{
next if /^\s+#/; # skip comment lines
last if /^__(END|DATA)__$/; # stop at end of code marker
print $out $_;
}
Do the same sort of thing to delete a particular line by using "next" to skip the lines you don't
want to show up in the output. This example skips every fifth line:
while( <$in> )
{
next unless $. % 5;
print $out $_;
}
If, for some odd reason, you really want to see the whole file at once rather than processing line by
line, you can slurp it in (as long as you can fit the whole thing in memory!):
open my $in, '<', $file or die "Can't read old file: $!"
open my $out, '>', "$file.new" or die "Can't write new file: $!";
my @lines = do { local $/; <$in> }; # slurp!
# do your magic here
print $out @lines;
Modules such as "File::Slurp" and "Tie::File" can help with that too. If you can, however, avoid
reading the entire file at once. Perl won't give that memory back to the operating system until the
process finishes.
You can also use Perl one-liners to modify a file in-place. The following changes all 'Fred' to 'Bar-ney' 'Barney'
ney' in inFile.txt, overwriting the file with the new contents. With the "-p" switch, Perl wraps a
"while" loop around the code you specify with "-e", and "-i" turns on in-place editing. The current
line is in $_. With "-p", Perl automatically prints the value of $_ at the end of the loop. See perl-run perlrun
run for more details.
perl -pi -e 's/Fred/Barney/' inFile.txt
To make a backup of "inFile.txt", give "-i" a file extension to add:
perl -pi.bak -e 's/Fred/Barney/' inFile.txt
To change only the fifth line, you can add a test checking $., the input line number, then only per-form perform
form the operation when the test passes:
perl -pi -e 's/Fred/Barney/ if $. == 5' inFile.txt
To add lines before a certain line, you can add a line (or lines!) before Perl prints $_:
perl -pi -e 'print "Put before third line\n" if $. == 3' inFile.txt
You can even add a line to the beginning of a file, since the current line prints at the end of the
loop:
perl -pi -e 'print "Put before first line\n" if $. == 1' inFile.txt
To insert a line after one already in the file, use the "-n" switch. It's just like "-p" except that
it doesn't print $_ at the end of the loop, so you have to do that yourself. In this case, print $_
first, then print the line that you want to add.
perl -ni -e 'print; print "Put after fifth line\n" if $. == 5' inFile.txt
To delete lines, only print the ones that you want.
perl -ni -e 'print unless /d/' inFile.txt
... or ...
perl -pi -e 'next unless /d/' inFile.txt
How do I count the number of lines in a file?
One fairly efficient way is to count newlines in the file. The following program uses a feature of
tr///, as documented in perlop. If your text file doesn't end with a newline, then it's not really a
proper text file, so this may report one fewer line than you expect.
$lines = 0;
open(FILE, $filename) or die "Can't open `$filename': $!";
while (sysread FILE, $buffer, 4096) {
$lines += ($buffer =~ tr/\n//);
}
close FILE;
This assumes no funny games with newline translations.
How can I use Perl's "-i" option from within a program?
"-i" sets the value of Perl's $^I variable, which in turn affects the behavior of "<>"; see perlrun
for more details. By modifying the appropriate variables directly, you can get the same behavior
within a larger program. For example:
# ...
{
local($^I, @ARGV) = ('.orig', glob("*.c"));
while (<>) {
if ($. == 1) {
print "This line should appear at the top of each file\n";
}
s/\b(p)earl\b/${1}erl/i; # Correct typos, preserving case
print;
close ARGV if eof; # Reset $.
}
}
# $^I and @ARGV return to their old values here
This block modifies all the ".c" files in the current directory, leaving a backup of the original
data from each file in a new ".c.orig" file.
How can I copy a file?
(contributed by brian d foy)
Use the File::Copy module. It comes with Perl and can do a true copy across file systems, and it does
its magic in a portable fashion.
use File::Copy;
copy( $original, $new_copy ) or die "Copy failed: $!";
If you can't use File::Copy, you'll have to do the work yourself: open the original file, open the
destination file, then print to the destination file as you read the original.
How do I make a temporary file name?
If you don't need to know the name of the file, you can use "open()" with "undef" in place of the
file name. The "open()" function creates an anonymous temporary file.
open my $tmp, '+>', undef or die $!;
Otherwise, you can use the File::Temp module.
use File::Temp qw/ tempfile tempdir /;
$dir = tempdir( CLEANUP => 1 );
($fh, $filename) = tempfile( DIR => $dir );
# or if you don't need to know the filename
$fh = tempfile( DIR => $dir );
The File::Temp has been a standard module since Perl 5.6.1. If you don't have a modern enough Perl
installed, use the "new_tmpfile" class method from the IO::File module to get a filehandle opened for
reading and writing. Use it if you don't need to know the file's name:
use IO::File;
$fh = IO::File->new_tmpfile()
or die "Unable to make new temporary file: $!";
If you're committed to creating a temporary file by hand, use the process ID and/or the current
time-value. If you need to have many temporary files in one process, use a counter:
BEGIN {
use Fcntl;
my $temp_dir = -d '/tmp' ? '/tmp' : $ENV{TMPDIR} || $ENV{TEMP};
my $base_name = sprintf "%s/%d-%d-0000", $temp_dir, $$, time;
sub temp_file {
local *FH;
my $count = 0;
until( defined(fileno(FH)) || $count++ > 100 ) {
$base_name =~ s/-(\d+)$/"-" . (1 + $1)/e;
# O_EXCL is required for security reasons.
sysopen FH, $base_name, O_WRONLY|O_EXCL|O_CREAT;
}
if( defined fileno(FH) ) {
return (*FH, $base_name);
}
else {
return ();
}
}
}
How can I manipulate fixed-record-length files?
The most efficient way is using pack() and unpack(). This is faster than using substr() when taking
many, many strings. It is slower for just a few.
Here is a sample chunk of code to break up and put back together again some fixed-format input lines,
in this case from the output of a normal, Berkeley-style ps:
# sample input line:
# 15158 p5 T 0:00 perl /home/tchrist/scripts/now-what
my $PS_T = 'A6 A4 A7 A5 A*';
open my $ps, '-|', 'ps';
print scalar <$ps>;
my @fields = qw( pid tt stat time command );
while (<$ps>) {
my %process;
@process{@fields} = unpack($PS_T, $_);
for my $field ( @fields ) {
print "$field: <$process{$field}>\n";
}
print 'line=', pack($PS_T, @process{@fields} ), "\n";
}
We've used a hash slice in order to easily handle the fields of each row. Storing the keys in an
array means it's easy to operate on them as a group or loop over them with for. It also avoids pol-luting polluting
luting the program with global variables and using symbolic references.
How can I make a filehandle local to a subroutine? How do I pass filehandles between subroutines?
How do I make an array of filehandles?
As of perl5.6, open() autovivifies file and directory handles as references if you pass it an unini-tialized uninitialized
tialized scalar variable. You can then pass these references just like any other scalar, and use
them in the place of named handles.
open my $fh, $file_name;
open local $fh, $file_name;
print $fh "Hello World!\n";
process_file( $fh );
If you like, you can store these filehandles in an array or a hash. If you access them directly,
they aren't simple scalars and you need to give "print" a little help by placing the filehandle ref-erence reference
erence in braces. Perl can only figure it out on its own when the filehandle reference is a simple
scalar.
my @fhs = ( $fh1, $fh2, $fh3 );
for( $i = 0; $i <= $#fhs; $i++ ) {
print {$fhs[$i]} "just another Perl answer, \n";
}
Before perl5.6, you had to deal with various typeglob idioms which you may see in older code.
open FILE, "> $filename";
process_typeglob( *FILE );
process_reference( \*FILE );
sub process_typeglob { local *FH = shift; print FH "Typeglob!" }
sub process_reference { local $fh = shift; print $fh "Reference!" }
If you want to create many anonymous handles, you should check out the Symbol or IO::Handle modules.
How can I use a filehandle indirectly?
An indirect filehandle is using something other than a symbol in a place that a filehandle is
expected. Here are ways to get indirect filehandles:
$fh = SOME_FH; # bareword is strict-subs hostile
$fh = "SOME_FH"; # strict-refs hostile; same package only
$fh = *SOME_FH; # typeglob
$fh = \*SOME_FH; # ref to typeglob (bless-able)
$fh = *SOME_FH{IO}; # blessed IO::Handle from *SOME_FH typeglob
Or, you can use the "new" method from one of the IO::* modules to create an anonymous filehandle,
store that in a scalar variable, and use it as though it were a normal filehandle.
use IO::Handle; # 5.004 or higher
$fh = IO::Handle->new();
Then use any of those as you would a normal filehandle. Anywhere that Perl is expecting a filehan-dle, filehandle,
dle, an indirect filehandle may be used instead. An indirect filehandle is just a scalar variable
that contains a filehandle. Functions like "print", "open", "seek", or the "<FH>" diamond operator
will accept either a named filehandle or a scalar variable containing one:
($ifh, $ofh, $efh) = (*STDIN, *STDOUT, *STDERR);
print $ofh "Type it: ";
$got = <$ifh>
print $efh "What was that: $got";
If you're passing a filehandle to a function, you can write the function in two ways:
sub accept_fh {
my $fh = shift;
print $fh "Sending to indirect filehandle\n";
}
Or it can localize a typeglob and use the filehandle directly:
sub accept_fh {
local *FH = shift;
print FH "Sending to localized filehandle\n";
}
Both styles work with either objects or typeglobs of real filehandles. (They might also work with
strings under some circumstances, but this is risky.)
accept_fh(*STDOUT);
accept_fh($handle);
In the examples above, we assigned the filehandle to a scalar variable before using it. That is
because only simple scalar variables, not expressions or subscripts of hashes or arrays, can be used
with built-ins like "print", "printf", or the diamond operator. Using something other than a simple
scalar variable as a filehandle is illegal and won't even compile:
@fd = (*STDIN, *STDOUT, *STDERR);
print $fd[1] "Type it: "; # WRONG
$got = <$fd[0]> # WRONG
print $fd[2] "What was that: $got"; # WRONG
With "print" and "printf", you get around this by using a block and an expression where you would
place the filehandle:
print { $fd[1] } "funny stuff\n";
printf { $fd[1] } "Pity the poor %x.\n", 3_735_928_559;
# Pity the poor deadbeef.
That block is a proper block like any other, so you can put more complicated code there. This sends
the message out to one of two places:
$ok = -x "/bin/cat";
print { $ok ? $fd[1] : $fd[2] } "cat stat $ok\n";
print { $fd[ 1+ ($ok || 0) ] } "cat stat $ok\n";
This approach of treating "print" and "printf" like object methods calls doesn't work for the diamond
operator. That's because it's a real operator, not just a function with a comma-less argument.
Assuming you've been storing typeglobs in your structure as we did above, you can use the built-in
function named "readline" to read a record just as "<>" does. Given the initialization shown above
for @fd, this would work, but only because readline() requires a typeglob. It doesn't work with
objects or strings, which might be a bug we haven't fixed yet.
$got = readline($fd[0]);
Let it be noted that the flakiness of indirect filehandles is not related to whether they're strings,
typeglobs, objects, or anything else. It's the syntax of the fundamental operators. Playing the
object game doesn't help you at all here.
How can I set up a footer format to be used with write()?
There's no builtin way to do this, but perlform has a couple of techniques to make it possible for
the intrepid hacker.
How can I write() into a string?
See "Accessing Formatting Internals" in perlform for an "swrite()" function.
How can I open a filehandle to a string? , , ,
(contributed by Peter J. Holzer, hjp-usenet2@hjp.at)
Since Perl 5.8.0, you can pass a reference to a scalar instead of the filename to create a file han-dle handle
dle which you can used to read from or write to a string:
open(my $fh, '>', \$string) or die "Could not open string for writing";
print $fh "foo\n";
print $fh "bar\n"; # $string now contains "foo\nbar\n"
open(my $fh, '<', \$string) or die "Could not open string for reading";
my $x = <$fh>; # $x now contains "foo\n"
With older versions of Perl, the "IO::String" module provides similar functionality.
How can I output my numbers with commas added?
(contributed by brian d foy and Benjamin Goldberg)
You can use Number::Format to separate places in a number. It handles locale information for those
of you who want to insert full stops instead (or anything else that they want to use, really).
This subroutine will add commas to your number:
sub commify {
local $_ = shift;
1 while s/^([-+]?\d+)(\d{3})/$1,$2/;
return $_;
}
This regex from Benjamin Goldberg will add commas to numbers:
s/(^[-+]?\d+?(?=(?>(?:\d{3})+)(?!\d))|\G\d{3}(?=\d))/$1,/g;
It is easier to see with comments:
s/(
^[-+]? # beginning of number.
\d+? # first digits before first comma
(?= # followed by, (but not included in the match) :
(?>(?:\d{3})+) # some positive multiple of three digits.
(?!\d) # an *exact* multiple, not x * 3 + 1 or whatever.
)
| # or:
\G\d{3} # after the last group, get three digits
(?=\d) # but they have to have more digits after them.
)/$1,/xg;
How can I translate tildes (~) in a filename?
Use the <> (glob()) operator, documented in perlfunc. Older versions of Perl require that you have a
shell installed that groks tildes. Recent perl versions have this feature built in. The File::KGlob
module (available from CPAN) gives more portable glob functionality.
Within Perl, you may use this directly:
$filename =~ s{
^ ~ # find a leading tilde
( # save this in $1
[^/] # a non-slash character
* # repeated 0 or more times (0 means me)
)
}{
$1
? (getpwnam($1))[7]
: ( $ENV{HOME} || $ENV{LOGDIR} )
}ex;
How come when I open a file read-write it wipes it out?
Because you're using something like this, which truncates the file and then gives you read-write
access:
open(FH, "+> /path/name"); # WRONG (almost always)
Whoops. You should instead use this, which will fail if the file doesn't exist.
open(FH, "+< /path/name"); # open for update
Using ">" always clobbers or creates. Using "<" never does either. The "+" doesn't change this.
Here are examples of many kinds of file opens. Those using sysopen() all assume
use Fcntl;
To open file for reading:
open(FH, "< $path") || die $!;
sysopen(FH, $path, O_RDONLY) || die $!;
To open file for writing, create new file if needed or else truncate old file:
open(FH, "> $path") || die $!;
sysopen(FH, $path, O_WRONLY|O_TRUNC|O_CREAT) || die $!;
sysopen(FH, $path, O_WRONLY|O_TRUNC|O_CREAT, 0666) || die $!;
To open file for writing, create new file, file must not exist:
sysopen(FH, $path, O_WRONLY|O_EXCL|O_CREAT) || die $!;
sysopen(FH, $path, O_WRONLY|O_EXCL|O_CREAT, 0666) || die $!;
To open file for appending, create if necessary:
open(FH, ">> $path") || die $!;
sysopen(FH, $path, O_WRONLY|O_APPEND|O_CREAT) || die $!;
sysopen(FH, $path, O_WRONLY|O_APPEND|O_CREAT, 0666) || die $!;
To open file for appending, file must exist:
sysopen(FH, $path, O_WRONLY|O_APPEND) || die $!;
To open file for update, file must exist:
open(FH, "+< $path") || die $!;
sysopen(FH, $path, O_RDWR) || die $!;
To open file for update, create file if necessary:
sysopen(FH, $path, O_RDWR|O_CREAT) || die $!;
sysopen(FH, $path, O_RDWR|O_CREAT, 0666) || die $!;
To open file for update, file must not exist:
sysopen(FH, $path, O_RDWR|O_EXCL|O_CREAT) || die $!;
sysopen(FH, $path, O_RDWR|O_EXCL|O_CREAT, 0666) || die $!;
To open a file without blocking, creating if necessary:
sysopen(FH, "/foo/somefile", O_WRONLY|O_NDELAY|O_CREAT)
or die "can't open /foo/somefile: $!":
Be warned that neither creation nor deletion of files is guaranteed to be an atomic operation over
NFS. That is, two processes might both successfully create or unlink the same file! Therefore
O_EXCL isn't as exclusive as you might wish.
See also the new perlopentut if you have it (new for 5.6).
Why do I sometimes get an "Argument list too long" when I use <*>?
The "<>" operator performs a globbing operation (see above). In Perl versions earlier than v5.6.0,
the internal glob() operator forks csh(1) to do the actual glob expansion, but csh can't handle more
than 127 items and so gives the error message "Argument list too long". People who installed tcsh as
csh won't have this problem, but their users may be surprised by it.
To get around this, either upgrade to Perl v5.6.0 or later, do the glob yourself with readdir() and
patterns, or use a module like File::KGlob, one that doesn't use the shell to do globbing.
Is there a leak/bug in glob()?
Due to the current implementation on some operating systems, when you use the glob() function or its
angle-bracket alias in a scalar context, you may cause a memory leak and/or unpredictable behavior.
It's best therefore to use glob() only in list context.
How can I open a file with a leading ">" or trailing blanks?
(contributed by Brian McCauley)
The special two argument form of Perl's open() function ignores trailing blanks in filenames and
infers the mode from certain leading characters (or a trailing "|"). In older versions of Perl this
was the only version of open() and so it is prevalent in old code and books.
Unless you have a particular reason to use the two argument form you should use the three argument
form of open() which does not treat any characters in the filename as special.
open FILE, "<", " file "; # filename is " file "
open FILE, ">", ">file"; # filename is ">file"
How can I reliably rename a file?
If your operating system supports a proper mv(1) utility or its functional equivalent, this works:
rename($old, $new) or system("mv", $old, $new);
It may be more portable to use the File::Copy module instead. You just copy to the new file to the
new name (checking return values), then delete the old one. This isn't really the same semantically
as a rename(), which preserves meta-information like permissions, timestamps, inode info, etc.
Newer versions of File::Copy export a move() function.
How can I lock a file?
Perl's builtin flock() function (see perlfunc for details) will call flock(2) if that exists,
fcntl(2) if it doesn't (on perl version 5.004 and later), and lockf(3) if neither of the two previous
system calls exists. On some systems, it may even use a different form of native locking. Here are
some gotchas with Perl's flock():
1 Produces a fatal error if none of the three system calls (or their close equivalent) exists.
2 lockf(3) does not provide shared locking, and requires that the filehandle be open for writing
(or appending, or read/writing).
3 Some versions of flock() can't lock files over a network (e.g. on NFS file systems), so you'd
need to force the use of fcntl(2) when you build Perl. But even this is dubious at best. See
the flock entry of perlfunc and the INSTALL file in the source distribution for information on
building Perl to do this.
Two potentially non-obvious but traditional flock semantics are that it waits indefinitely until
the lock is granted, and that its locks are merely advisory. Such discretionary locks are more
flexible, but offer fewer guarantees. This means that files locked with flock() may be modified
by programs that do not also use flock(). Cars that stop for red lights get on well with each
other, but not with cars that don't stop for red lights. See the perlport manpage, your port's
specific documentation, or your system-specific local manpages for details. It's best to assume
traditional behavior if you're writing portable programs. (If you're not, you should as always
feel perfectly free to write for your own system's idiosyncrasies (sometimes called "features").
Slavish adherence to portability concerns shouldn't get in the way of your getting your job
done.)
For more information on file locking, see also "File Locking" in perlopentut if you have it (new
for 5.6).
Why can't I just open(FH, ">file.lock")?
A common bit of code NOT TO USE is this:
sleep(3) while -e "file.lock"; # PLEASE DO NOT USE
open(LCK, "> file.lock"); # THIS BROKEN CODE
This is a classic race condition: you take two steps to do something which must be done in one.
That's why computer hardware provides an atomic test-and-set instruction. In theory, this "ought"
to work:
sysopen(FH, "file.lock", O_WRONLY|O_EXCL|O_CREAT)
or die "can't open file.lock: $!";
except that lamentably, file creation (and deletion) is not atomic over NFS, so this won't work (at
least, not every time) over the net. Various schemes involving link() have been suggested, but these
tend to involve busy-wait, which is also less than desirable.
I still don't get locking. I just want to increment the number in the file. How can I do this?
Didn't anyone ever tell you web-page hit counters were useless? They don't count number of hits,
they're a waste of time, and they serve only to stroke the writer's vanity. It's better to pick a
random number; they're more realistic.
Anyway, this is what you can do if you can't help yourself.
use Fcntl qw(:DEFAULT :flock);
sysopen(FH, "numfile", O_RDWR|O_CREAT) or die "can't open numfile: $!";
flock(FH, LOCK_EX) or die "can't flock numfile: $!";
$num = <FH> || 0;
seek(FH, 0, 0) or die "can't rewind numfile: $!";
truncate(FH, 0) or die "can't truncate numfile: $!";
(print FH $num+1, "\n") or die "can't write numfile: $!";
close FH or die "can't close numfile: $!";
Here's a much better web-page hit counter:
$hits = int( (time() - 850_000_000) / rand(1_000) );
If the count doesn't impress your friends, then the code might. :-)
All I want to do is append a small amount of text to the end of a file. Do I still have to use lock-ing? locking?
ing?
If you are on a system that correctly implements flock() and you use the example appending code from
"perldoc -f flock" everything will be OK even if the OS you are on doesn't implement append mode cor-rectly correctly
rectly (if such a system exists.) So if you are happy to restrict yourself to OSs that implement
flock() (and that's not really much of a restriction) then that is what you should do.
If you know you are only going to use a system that does correctly implement appending (i.e. not
Win32) then you can omit the seek() from the code in the previous answer.
If you know you are only writing code to run on an OS and filesystem that does implement append mode
correctly (a local filesystem on a modern Unix for example), and you keep the file in block-buffered
mode and you write less than one buffer-full of output between each manual flushing of the buffer
then each bufferload is almost guaranteed to be written to the end of the file in one chunk without
getting intermingled with anyone else's output. You can also use the syswrite() function which is
simply a wrapper around your systems write(2) system call.
There is still a small theoretical chance that a signal will interrupt the system level write() oper-ation operation
ation before completion. There is also a possibility that some STDIO implementations may call multi-ple multiple
ple system level write()s even if the buffer was empty to start. There may be some systems where
this probability is reduced to zero.
How do I randomly update a binary file?
If you're just trying to patch a binary, in many cases something as simple as this works:
perl -i -pe 's{window manager}{window mangler}g' /usr/bin/emacs
However, if you have fixed sized records, then you might do something more like this:
$RECSIZE = 220; # size of record, in bytes
$recno = 37; # which record to update
open(FH, "+<somewhere") || die "can't update somewhere: $!";
seek(FH, $recno * $RECSIZE, 0);
read(FH, $record, $RECSIZE) == $RECSIZE || die "can't read record $recno: $!";
# munge the record
seek(FH, -$RECSIZE, 1);
print FH $record;
close FH;
Locking and error checking are left as an exercise for the reader. Don't forget them or you'll be
quite sorry.
How do I get a file's timestamp in perl?
If you want to retrieve the time at which the file was last read, written, or had its meta-data
(owner, etc) changed, you use the -A, -M, or -C file test operations as documented in perlfunc.
These retrieve the age of the file (measured against the start-time of your program) in days as a
floating point number. Some platforms may not have all of these times. See perlport for details. To
retrieve the "raw" time in seconds since the epoch, you would call the stat function, then use local-
time(), gmtime(), or POSIX::strftime() to convert this into human-readable form.
Here's an example:
$write_secs = (stat($file))[9];
printf "file %s updated at %s\n", $file,
scalar localtime($write_secs);
If you prefer something more legible, use the File::stat module (part of the standard distribution in
version 5.004 and later):
# error checking left as an exercise for reader.
use File::stat;
use Time::localtime;
$date_string = ctime(stat($file)->mtime);
print "file $file updated at $date_string\n";
The POSIX::strftime() approach has the benefit of being, in theory, independent of the current
locale. See perllocale for details.
How do I set a file's timestamp in perl?
You use the utime() function documented in "utime" in perlfunc. By way of example, here's a little
program that copies the read and write times from its first argument to all the rest of them.
if (@ARGV < 2) {
die "usage: cptimes timestamp_file other_files ...\n";
}
$timestamp = shift;
($atime, $mtime) = (stat($timestamp))[8,9];
utime $atime, $mtime, @ARGV;
Error checking is, as usual, left as an exercise for the reader.
The perldoc for utime also has an example that has the same effect as touch(1) on files that already
exist.
Certain file systems have a limited ability to store the times on a file at the expected level of
precision. For example, the FAT and HPFS filesystem are unable to create dates on files with a finer
granularity than two seconds. This is a limitation of the filesystems, not of utime().
How do I print to more than one file at once?
To connect one filehandle to several output filehandles, you can use the IO::Tee or Tie::FileHan-
dle::Multiplex modules.
If you only have to do this once, you can print individually to each filehandle.
for $fh (FH1, FH2, FH3) { print $fh "whatever\n" }
How can I read in an entire file all at once?
You can use the File::Slurp module to do it in one step.
use File::Slurp;
$all_of_it = read_file($filename); # entire file in scalar
@all_lines = read_file($filename); # one line perl element
The customary Perl approach for processing all the lines in a file is to do so one line at a time:
open (INPUT, $file) || die "can't open $file: $!";
while (<INPUT>) {
chomp;
# do something with $_
}
close(INPUT) || die "can't close $file: $!";
This is tremendously more efficient than reading the entire file into memory as an array of lines and
then processing it one element at a time, which is often--if not almost always--the wrong approach.
Whenever you see someone do this:
@lines = <INPUT>;
you should think long and hard about why you need everything loaded at once. It's just not a scal-able scalable
able solution. You might also find it more fun to use the standard Tie::File module, or the DB_File
module's $DB_RECNO bindings, which allow you to tie an array to a file so that accessing an element
the array actually accesses the corresponding line in the file.
You can read the entire filehandle contents into a scalar.
{
local(*INPUT, $/);
open (INPUT, $file) || die "can't open $file: $!";
$var = <INPUT>;
}
That temporarily undefs your record separator, and will automatically close the file at block exit.
If the file is already open, just use this:
$var = do { local $/; <INPUT> };
For ordinary files you can also use the read function.
read( INPUT, $var, -s INPUT );
The third argument tests the byte size of the data on the INPUT filehandle and reads that many bytes
into the buffer $var.
How can I read in a file by paragraphs?
Use the $/ variable (see perlvar for details). You can either set it to "" to eliminate empty para-graphs paragraphs
graphs ("abc\n\n\n\ndef", for instance, gets treated as two paragraphs and not three), or "\n\n" to
accept empty paragraphs.
Note that a blank line must have no blanks in it. Thus "fred\n \nstuff\n\n" is one paragraph, but
"fred\n\nstuff\n\n" is two.
How can I read a single character from a file? From the keyboard?
You can use the builtin "getc()" function for most filehandles, but it won't (easily) work on a ter-minal terminal
minal device. For STDIN, either use the Term::ReadKey module from CPAN or use the sample code in
"getc" in perlfunc.
If your system supports the portable operating system programming interface (POSIX), you can use the
following code, which you'll note turns off echo processing as well.
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
$| = 1;
for (1..4) {
my $got;
print "gimme: ";
$got = getone();
print "--> $got\n";
}
exit;
BEGIN {
use POSIX qw(:termios_h);
my ($term, $oterm, $echo, $noecho, $fd_stdin);
$fd_stdin = fileno(STDIN);
$term = POSIX::Termios->new();
$term->getattr($fd_stdin);
$oterm = $term->getlflag();
$echo = ECHO | ECHOK | ICANON;
$noecho = $oterm & ~$echo;
sub cbreak {
$term->setlflag($noecho);
$term->setcc(VTIME, 1);
$term->setattr($fd_stdin, TCSANOW);
}
sub cooked {
$term->setlflag($oterm);
$term->setcc(VTIME, 0);
$term->setattr($fd_stdin, TCSANOW);
}
sub getone {
my $key = '';
cbreak();
sysread(STDIN, $key, 1);
cooked();
return $key;
}
}
END { cooked() }
The Term::ReadKey module from CPAN may be easier to use. Recent versions include also support for
non-portable systems as well.
use Term::ReadKey;
open(TTY, "</dev/tty");
print "Gimme a char: ";
ReadMode "raw";
$key = ReadKey 0, *TTY;
ReadMode "normal";
printf "\nYou said %s, char number %03d\n",
$key, ord $key;
How can I tell whether there's a character waiting on a filehandle?
The very first thing you should do is look into getting the Term::ReadKey extension from CPAN. As we
mentioned earlier, it now even has limited support for non-portable (read: not open systems, closed,
proprietary, not POSIX, not Unix, etc) systems.
You should also check out the Frequently Asked Questions list in comp.unix.* for things like this:
the answer is essentially the same. It's very system dependent. Here's one solution that works on
BSD systems:
sub key_ready {
my($rin, $nfd);
vec($rin, fileno(STDIN), 1) = 1;
return $nfd = select($rin,undef,undef,0);
}
If you want to find out how many characters are waiting, there's also the FIONREAD ioctl call to be
looked at. The h2ph tool that comes with Perl tries to convert C include files to Perl code, which
can be "require"d. FIONREAD ends up defined as a function in the sys/ioctl.ph file:
require 'sys/ioctl.ph';
$size = pack("L", 0);
ioctl(FH, FIONREAD(), $size) or die "Couldn't call ioctl: $!\n";
$size = unpack("L", $size);
If h2ph wasn't installed or doesn't work for you, you can grep the include files by hand:
% grep FIONREAD /usr/include/*/*
/usr/include/asm/ioctls.h:#define FIONREAD 0x541B
Or write a small C program using the editor of champions:
% cat > fionread.c
#include <sys/ioctl.h>
main() {
printf("%#08x\n", FIONREAD);
}
^D
% cc -o fionread fionread.c
% ./fionread
0x4004667f
And then hard code it, leaving porting as an exercise to your successor.
$FIONREAD = 0x4004667f; # XXX: opsys dependent
$size = pack("L", 0);
ioctl(FH, $FIONREAD, $size) or die "Couldn't call ioctl: $!\n";
$size = unpack("L", $size);
FIONREAD requires a filehandle connected to a stream, meaning that sockets, pipes, and tty devices
work, but not files.
How do I do a "tail -f" in perl?
First try
seek(GWFILE, 0, 1);
The statement "seek(GWFILE, 0, 1)" doesn't change the current position, but it does clear the end-of-file end-offile
file condition on the handle, so that the next "<GWFILE>" makes Perl try again to read something.
If that doesn't work (it relies on features of your stdio implementation), then you need something
more like this:
for (;;) {
for ($curpos = tell(GWFILE); <GWFILE>; $curpos = tell(GWFILE)) {
# search for some stuff and put it into files
}
# sleep for a while
seek(GWFILE, $curpos, 0); # seek to where we had been
}
If this still doesn't work, look into the "clearerr" method from "IO::Handle", which resets the error
and end-of-file states on the handle.
There's also a "File::Tail" module from CPAN.
How do I dup() a filehandle in Perl?
If you check "open" in perlfunc, you'll see that several of the ways to call open() should do the
trick. For example:
open(LOG, ">>/foo/logfile");
open(STDERR, ">&LOG");
Or even with a literal numeric descriptor:
$fd = $ENV{MHCONTEXTFD};
open(MHCONTEXT, "<&=$fd"); # like fdopen(3S)
Note that "<&STDIN" makes a copy, but "<&=STDIN" make an alias. That means if you close an aliased
handle, all aliases become inaccessible. This is not true with a copied one.
Error checking, as always, has been left as an exercise for the reader.
How do I close a file descriptor by number?
If, for some reason, you have a file descriptor instead of a filehandle (perhaps you used
"POSIX::open"), you can use the "close()" function from the "POSIX" module:
use POSIX ();
POSIX::close( $fd );
This should rarely be necessary, as the Perl "close()" function is to be used for things that Perl
opened itself, even if it was a dup of a numeric descriptor as with "MHCONTEXT" above. But if you
really have to, you may be able to do this:
require 'sys/syscall.ph';
$rc = syscall(&SYS_close, $fd + 0); # must force numeric
die "can't sysclose $fd: $!" unless $rc == -1;
Or, just use the fdopen(3S) feature of "open()":
{
open my( $fh ), "<&=$fd" or die "Cannot reopen fd=$fd: $!";
close $fh;
}
Why can't I use "C:\temp\foo" in DOS paths? Why doesn't `C:\temp\foo.exe` work?
Whoops! You just put a tab and a formfeed into that filename! Remember that within double quoted
strings ("like\this"), the backslash is an escape character. The full list of these is in "Quote and
Quote-like Operators" in perlop. Unsurprisingly, you don't have a file called "c:(tab)emp(form-
feed)oo" or "c:(tab)emp(formfeed)oo.exe" on your legacy DOS filesystem.
Either single-quote your strings, or (preferably) use forward slashes. Since all DOS and Windows
versions since something like MS-DOS 2.0 or so have treated "/" and "\" the same in a path, you might
as well use the one that doesn't clash with Perl--or the POSIX shell, ANSI C and C++, awk, Tcl, Java,
or Python, just to mention a few. POSIX paths are more portable, too.
Why doesn't glob("*.*") get all the files?
Because even on non-Unix ports, Perl's glob function follows standard Unix globbing semantics.
You'll need "glob("*")" to get all (non-hidden) files. This makes glob() portable even to legacy
systems. Your port may include proprietary globbing functions as well. Check its documentation for
details.
Why does Perl let me delete read-only files? Why does "-i" clobber protected files? Isn't this a
bug in Perl?
This is elaborately and painstakingly described in the file-dir-perms article in the "Far More Than
You Ever Wanted To Know" collection in http://www.cpan.org/misc/olddoc/FMTEYEWTK.tgz .
The executive summary: learn how your filesystem works. The permissions on a file say what can hap-pen happen
pen to the data in that file. The permissions on a directory say what can happen to the list of
files in that directory. If you delete a file, you're removing its name from the directory (so the
operation depends on the permissions of the directory, not of the file). If you try to write to the
file, the permissions of the file govern whether you're allowed to.
How do I select a random line from a file?
Here's an algorithm from the Camel Book:
srand;
rand($.) < 1 && ($line = $_) while <>;
This has a significant advantage in space over reading the whole file in. You can find a proof of
this method in The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 2, Section 3.4.2, by Donald E. Knuth.
You can use the File::Random module which provides a function for that algorithm:
use File::Random qw/random_line/;
my $line = random_line($filename);
Another way is to use the Tie::File module, which treats the entire file as an array. Simply access
a random array element.
Why do I get weird spaces when I print an array of lines?
Saying
print "@lines\n";
joins together the elements of @lines with a space between them. If @lines were "("little",
"fluffy", "clouds")" then the above statement would print
little fluffy clouds
but if each element of @lines was a line of text, ending a newline character "("little\n",
"fluffy\n", "clouds\n")" then it would print:
little
fluffy
clouds
If your array contains lines, just print them:
print @lines;
REVISION
Revision: $Revision: 10126 $
Date: $Date: 2007-10-27 21:29:20 +0200 (Sat, 27 Oct 2007) $
See perlfaq for source control details and availability.
AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 1997-2007 Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington, and other authors as noted. All rights
reserved.
This documentation is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl
itself.
Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples here are in the public domain. You are permitted
and encouraged to use this code and any derivatives thereof in your own programs for fun or for
profit as you see fit. A simple comment in the code giving credit to the FAQ would be courteous but
is not required.
perl v5.8.9 2007-11-17 PERLFAQ5(1)
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