> From: activeperl-boun...@listserv.activestate.com [mailto:activeperl-
> boun...@listserv.activestate.com] On Behalf Of Phillip Richcreek
> Sent: 02 May 2012 14:56
> To: activeperl@listserv.activestate.com
> Subject: Inline test data
>
> A recent post used a nice feature for providing test data to a script.
> (See __DATA__ below) I've seen it before but never understood it. How
> does it work? What signals the end of the data to the while (my $line
> = <DATA>) { ? Is this a type of here document? Can someone point me
> where it's descibed in the perl doc?
That's a good question. It took me a while to find it, but see the Special
Literals section in 'perldoc perldata'.
The __DATA__ is just a marker to tell the perl compiler that there is no more
code after this point. The DATA file handle is the same one used by the
compiler when it stopped parsing (or a duplicate), so the next read will be the
first line after __DATA__. You can read all the way to the end of the source
file. In fact you can rewind (perldoc -f seek) the DATA file handle and read
the script from the beginning, if you want. For (a trivial) example...
use strict;
use warnings;
seek DATA, 0, 0;
while (<DATA>) {
print;
}
__DATA__
HTH
--
Brian Raven
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