Re: [vox-tech] Perl: setting default input channel?

[Foo Lim <fwMAPSlim@ucdavis.edu>]

On Fri, 15 Sep 2000, Mark Kim wrote:

> I was originally thinking along the lines of:
> 
>    $varname = <>;   # I read from STDIN
> 
> I read something interesting.  Executing <> doesn't actually read from
> STDIN, but it first checks the arguments in @ARG, and if there are no
> arguments, it uses "-" (STDIN) but it opens the file pointed to by $ARG[0]
> if any exists.  Interesting...
> 
> -Mark

Hi Mark,

I think it reads from @ARGV, not @ARG.  You piqued my interest and started
to play around with the variable.  You can alter the array @ARGV before
reading from <> and read from files not specified by the user on the
command line.  Usually, when the user specifies a file on the command
line, it will ignore STDIN, but you can put it back in!  Just do this:
unshift @ARGV, "-";
and it will read from STDIN first, and when you press ^D, it will read
from the other elements specified on the command line.

Hope this helps.
FL