Re: Adding Default Values [for BEGINNERS]

[ikegami]

$file0 is not blank. It contains \n. Just use chomp to remove the newline before checking if the variable is "empty".

my $file = <STDIN>;
chomp($file);
$file ||= "somelist";

The above will also use the default if 0 (zero) is entered. The following avoids that problem:

my $file = <STDIN>;
chomp($file);
$file = "somelist"
   if not length $file;

By the way, you really, really, really should use use strict; and use warnings;.