: Why does reading into a variable instead of $_ make a difference? : Why does the read for the date work with $_ just fine?? In the second example, change <FILE>; to $_ = <FILE>;. The angle operator <FILE> only assigns the next line to $_ when it's the only thing in the conditional of a while() statement. As a statement by itself, it is (evidently) being taken in list context, so it's sucking up all the lines and doing nothing with them. -- tdk
