[LA.pm] calling gzip from within perl

[Jeremy Leader]

Peter Benjamin wrote:
> At 10:21 PM 6/28/2005, David Heayn wrote:
>>       open(FILE, "gunzip $fileLoc |") or die "Cannot gunzip '$fileLoc': $!";
>>       my @stuff = <FILE>;
>>       close(FILE);
<snip>
> 
> Does your script use STDIN?  If so, then
> this method of re-using STDIN (the pipe after the filename in
> the open) would cause problems.  They share the same /dev/*
> file name that STDIN uses.  As it appears to be a CGI script
> I suppose you will not be able to re-use STDIN using the |
> inside the open.

But the snippet of code above doesn't use STDIN.
The idiom open(FILE, "commandline |")... runs commandline
and pipes its STDOUT to the handle FILE; it doesn't
affect the current process's STDIN handle at all.

Now if he'd written:

close STDIN;
open(STDIN, "commandline |")...

then your point about re-using STDIN would be a valid concern.

-- 
Jeremy Leader
jleader at alumni.caltech.edu
leaderj at yahoo-inc.com (work)