Re^2: using while, first line was skipped (invisble)

[anonymized user 468275]

Yes, but we really hope it isn't don't we, otherwise Perl would be harder to use! We rather hope instead that it's explained by the use of postfix ++ later on in the code. (Update: as has already been addressed by now)

[tye]

That could be explained by something as simple as trailing whitespace.

Yes, but we really hope it isn't don't we, otherwise Perl would be harder to use!

Perhaps you did not understood my comment? Whether it was actually trailing whitespace (in this case) or not does not at all change the fact that the regex used (and surrounding code) did not handle something as mundane as trailing whitespace. There being no trailing whitespace in the particular input file being used has no bearing on how hard it is to use Perl. Perl actually does not magically ignore trailing whitespace in input for you. (Perl does do several things to try to almost magically deal with newlines in your input for you.)

Since there were other problems with the code that certainly result in the first line being ignored, the odds are good that the first two lines didn't have trailing whitespace, else the problem statement would have been different, of course.