from text file to array in shortest way

[Brian Wakem]

my @books_array = ();
open(FILE, '<books_file.txt') or croak 'Can open file';
while (<FILE>){
push @books_array, $_;
}
Other shorter ways than above?

open......
my @books_array = <FILE>;

 

[John Bokma]

my @books_array = ();

= () is not needed.

open(FILE, '<books_file.txt') or croak 'Can open file';
while (<FILE>){
push @books_array, $_;
}
Other shorter ways than above?

use File::Slurp;

my @books_array = read_file( 'filename' );

 

[ngoc]

my @books_array = ();
open(FILE, '<books_file.txt') or croak 'Can open file';
while (<FILE>){
push @books_array, $_;
}
Other shorter ways than above?

 

[Veli-Pekka Tätilä]

my @books_array = ();
open(FILE, '<books_file.txt') or croak 'Can open file';
while (<FILE>){
push @books_array, $_;
}
Other shorter ways than above?

Hi,
I'm not sure if this qualifies as an entry but one way would be to use the
diamond operator and specify a file name on the command-line. The down-side
with this approach is that you cannot, to my knowledge, change the error
message displayed by Perl. If the file canot be opened, you're program will
not even run because the file is thought of as STDIN and Perl fails to get
it. Or this is how i think of it from the user point of view.

Also, I think croak is not used by default so error messages may be reported
differently, that is the exact line where it died rather than giving the
callers line number.

The code would be:

my @books_array = <>;

If you want a custom error message, you'll have to open the file explicitli
I guess. Or maybe a die-handler can also do the croaking, though that's at
least one extra line and a bit of a hack, too. The thing I 've found
confusing is that die-handlers can get called even inside an eval block,
where a death is not a fatal thing (the program can still continue).

I wonder how we measure shortness in this particular case? A one-line loop
like:

push @books_array, $_ while <FILE>;

does exactly the same thing as your while loop but saves a few braces. But
then again, this is not good for the future. If you'll need to do more than
one thing inside the while loop, you can either try tricks with the comma
operator or give up and make it a more regular while. Similarly, if
strictness is not required you could just use the array without mentioning
it first.

I'm rather new to Perl still but thought I'd give this a try.

 

[usenet]

while (<FILE>){
push @books_array, $_;
}
Other shorter ways than above?

Use IO::All
my @books = io($file) -> slurp;

 

[Eric J. Roode]

my @books_array = ();
open(FILE, '<books_file.txt') or croak 'Can open file';
while (<FILE>){
push @books_array, $_;
}
Other shorter ways than above?

use Tie::File;
tie my @books_array, 'books_file.txt' or die "Can't open: $!";

--
Eric
`$=`;$_=\%!;($_)=/(.)/;$==++$|;($.,$/,$,,$\,$",$;,$^,$#,$~,$*,$:,@%)=(
$!=~/(.)(.).(.)(.)(.)(.)..(.)(.)(.)..(.)......(.)/,$"),$=++;$.++;$.++;
$_++;$_++;($_,$\,$,)=($~.$"."$;$/$%[$?]$_$\$,$:$%[$?]",$"&$~,$#,);$,++
;$,++;$^|=$";`$_$\$,$/$:$;$~$*$%[$?]$.$~$*${#}$%[$?]$;$\$"$^$~$*.>&$=`