[boulder.pm] break a while(<F>) and better grep?

[Randall Fowle]

On Sat, 13 May 2000, Robert L. Harris wrote:

> Part of the problem is I want it to break out of the while at the first
> time it finds $string, but not the loop that the while is in.  Will
> a "break" do this clean?  Something else? 

The keyword "last" works like "break" does in C:

while(<File>) {
  if (<$String>) {
    do stuff;
    last;
  }
}

This will take you out of the while(<File>) loop without taking you out
of a loop that contains this code.

> Is there a faster way to grep a string out of a file, without actually
> doing a system('grep')?  I just need to know if the string is in the
> file.

System will at least tell you if the string is in the file, even if it
does spawn a whole new process.  As far as I know, your only alternative
is to traverse the file and try to match the string to each line.


-Randy.
will skip the reference between spawning processes and Mother's Day