Re^2: what's this loo code? (*slurp*)

[Aristotle]

Efficient:

perl -ne'BEGIN{$/=\65536} $a+=tr/\n//; END{print"$a\n"}' file

Pity there's no way to set $/ to a reference to a number using a switch.

Makeshifts last the longest.

[John M. Dlugosz]

If the last line doesn't end with a \n (that is, \n is not the last character in the last chunk) you'll be off by one.

[Aristotle]

Yes, I poached this from perlfaq5 which notes the issue.

Makeshifts last the longest.