How do I read the contents of a file?

[vroom]

How do I read the contents of a file?

Originally posted as a Categorized Question.

[vroom]

All you need to do is use open:

open FILEHANDLE, filename;

Then all you have to do is read from your FILEHANDLE with <FILEHANDLE>. If you assign this to a scalar like $line=<FILE>, you'll get one line. However if you set it equal to an array like @lines=<FILE> you'll get all the lines.

Then you should use close when you're finished reading from the file:

open FILE, "myfile" or die "Couldn't open: $!";
@lines=<FILE>; #get all the lines from the file
close FILE;

open FILE2, "myfile2" or die "Couldn't open: $!";
while(<FILE2>){  #reads in from the file a line at a time and puts it 
+in the default variable
  print $_;      #print the default variable $_ which the line is stor
+ed in.
}  
close FILE2;

[Roger]

Seeing that no one is using IO::File to open files, I will state the alternative (preferred) method of file handling. I know this is an old question, I am just stating the obvious here, but this post is to offer guidance to the beginner, isn't it?

To open a file with IO::File,


use IO::File;
$f = new IO::File "filename.txt", "r";

To read data from the file, just use the <> operator:


while (<$f>)
{
   ... do something here...
}

To close the file afterwards, simply undefine $f:


undef $f;

[davido]

If you're a fan of lexical scoping, it could be used to improve the previous example by removing the need to undef $f in order to close the handle. With lexical scoping, when $f falls out of scope, the file is closed implicitly. See the following example:

use strict;
use warnings;
use IO::File;
{
    my $f = new IO::File "filename.txt", "r";
    while (<$f>) {
        # do your stuff
    }
}

As the outter pair of curly brackets closes, so does the block in which $f was defined, and thus $f falls from scope, and thus is undefined, and thus the file to which it refers is implicitly closed.

Dave

"If I had my life to do over again, I'd be a plumber." -- Albert Einstein

[NetWallah]

Since this is a newbie tutorial, it may be worth explaining that the contents of the record read are available in the $_ variable, in the block "... do something here...".

For example, if you wanted to PRINT the file, you would say:

while (<$f>)
{
  print $_; # $_ contains the record most recently read

  #  The "$_" is implied if omitted, so you could simply
  #  say:    print;  
  #
  # If you need to append a newline after each record,
  #  use :  print "$_\n";
}

[ysth]

Seeing that no one is using IO::File to open files, I will state the alternative (preferred) method of file handling.

I've seen this designation "preferred" several times now. This isn't an attack, but a genuine question. What is the source for this? I see in perl5004delta that the IO:: family is preferred over the older FileHandle module, but nowhere do I see any reference to open() being no longer the preferred way to open files.

[TGI]

You can also change the record separator. The record separator is the character that perl uses to decide how much data to take in at once.

It is accessed with the special variable $/ and the default value is \n.

Some examples:


$/ = "\n"; #default value
$file=<DATA>; #gets one line
@file=<DATA>; #gets all lines, each line in one value
print "$file\n\n";
print join "|", @file;
__DATA__
1,2,3
4,5,6
7,8,9

prints:

1,2,3


4,5,6
|7,8,9

While but if you set $/ = ","; you get:

1,

2,|3
4,|5,|6
7,|8,|9

Note that in the second example, "3\n4," is a record.

[nite_man]

You can use the function read for reading of file content in the string variable:

my $file_cont; # define a variable for keeping of file content
my $fname = '/tmp/your_file';

open INPUT, $fname or die "Can't open file $fname: $!";
binmode INPUT; # If your file is binare
read INPUT, $file_cont, -s $fname;
close INPUT or die "Can't close file $fname: $!";

Format of function  read is following:

       read FILEHANDLE,SCALAR,LENGTH,OFFSET
or
       read FILEHANDLE,SCALAR,LENGTH

[Mago]

Para os membros ou futuros membros da lingua portuguesa.


To the members or future members of the Portuguese language.

Como é de normal encontramos em Perl diversas maneiras de fazer uma mesma rotina vou colocar de maneira bem simples, como construir uma função de leitura de uma arquivo, onde será retornado um array, onde cada posição representa um linha do arquivo.


As it is common in Perl to find several ways to do the same thing, I will demonstrate a very simple way to construct a file reading function where an array is returned in which each element represents one line of the file.




sub le {
    my $nomeArq = $_[0];    # recebe com parâmetro o nome do arquivo.
    my @arrayArq;
    my $linha;
    my $num = 0;
    open (ARQ, "< $nomeArq") or die "Erro ao abrir o arquivo: $nomeArq
+: $!"; # Abre o arquivo ou mata o processo com uma mensagem de erro.
    while ($linha = <ARQ>) {  # Varre todas as linhas do arquivo.
          $arrayArq[$num] = $linha;  # Insere linha no array.
          $num++;
    }
    close ARQ;   # Fecha o Arquivo
    return @arrayArq;
}


Gostaria de lembrar que essa é uma função bem simples para que um iniciante possa entender facilmente como ela funciona.


I would like to point out that this is an example simple enough for a beginner to easily understand how it works.

É natural que a mesma seja melhorada, para sua efetiva utilização.


Naturally this can be adjusted to better fit a particular use.

English translation by QandAEditors.