note Caron <blockquote><i>The second while however, will stop as soon as it finds an empty line</i></blockquote> <p>Just to test your assertion:</p> <code> while (my $line = <DATA>) {print $line}; __DATA__ one two three four </code> <p>results in</p> <pre> one two three four </pre> <p>It seems that empty lines don't break the loop at all.</p> 484238 484330