in reply to Re: How to process multiple input files?
in thread How to process multiple input files?
update: never mind. In production code I would have simply written defined to be sure, but looking through the docs I see that this construct is special even in the case of explicit assignment. I know that the quick while(<>) tests for defined, or started to at some specific version of Perl (I remember the classic Camel book explaining how lines are never False because they end in "\n"), but wasn't sure that applied when assignment was being made.
In general, I rely less on special cases and magical meanings in well-written production code than in a quick one-liner. Declaring variables, and not using $_ much falls into the same category, so I somehow was thinking the magic was not in effect.