SPUG: itm 60 in effective perl programming

[Yitzchak Scott-Thoennes]

On Thu, Feb 24, 2005 at 10:26:30AM -0800, Ben Reser wrote:
> 
> I'm fully aware of what the original is doing.  But if it's described as
> joining all the lines in a file it doesn't do that.  Just because you
> can use the regex operator to do something doesn't mean it's the most
> efficient.  And many times it's not the most readable.  
> 
> IMHO this script is seriously bugged.  It's misusing the <> operator and
> I'm a bit suprised to hear that it was found in a book titled Effective
> Perl.

The description given by the original poster said "joins lines in a file",
not *all* the lines in a file.  The original code does in fact do that,
and in a way that makes it reasonable to suppose that the input file is
known to have an even number of lines.