How do I read paragraphs at a time with Perl?

Question

When I write

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

while(  ) {
    print \"\\n-------------------------\\n\\n\";
    print;
    <>;
}
         


        

Answer 1

I guess you're expecting this line

local $/ = "";

to change the behaviour of

to keep reading until the end of the data.

But in fact it takes something like this

{
    local $/;  # $/ becomes undef in this block
    ...
}

to enable slurp mode (and to contain that mode to the scope inside the {curlys}).

In effect it's saying "forget about thinking of newlines as the end-of-record marker",

Besides that... there's a tie fighter in your code!

while(  ) {
    print "\n-------------------------\n\n";
    print;
    <>;    # <-- Feel the power of the DARK SIDE!!!
}

This little guy will read from STDIN, not from DATA - is that really what you want?