Re^2: Using Data::Dumper to dump an array of hashes to a file

[alexm]

sub in {
    my ( $file ) = @_;

    open my $fh, '<', $file
        or die "Can't read '$file': $!";
    local $/ = undef;  # read whole file
    my $dumped = <$fh>;
    close $fh or die "Can't close '$file': $!";
    return @{ eval $dumped };
}

Wouldn't do or require accomplish just the same task, but more succinctly?

[kyle]

Mostly, yes.

I wouldn't use require because it would decline to load the same file twice (unless you monkey with %INC). Also, I don't know if it would return the value returned by the file (I think it doesn't).

Using do is a better choice, but the error handling is different. Here's some code I wrote a while back after examining the docs for a while:

    if ( ! defined do $rc_file ) {
        die "Error in '$rc_file': $@"    if $@;
        die "Can't read '$rc_file': $!"  if $!;
        warn "'$rc_file' returned undef as last value";
    }

It's not as easy as just "return @{ do $file }", but I admit I like it better. Using do has some other differences noted by the documentation, but nothing I'd expect to trip us up in this case.

[alexm]

I wouldn't use require because it would decline to load the same file twice (unless you monkey with %INC). Also, I don't know if it would return the value returned by the file (I think it doesn't).

It actually does :)

I've been using require for a while to read simple config files: it does syntax error checking and the fact that it only loads once was not a big deal. However, I agree that YAML (or Config::IniFiles et al.) are safer and should be preferred.