[ILUG] A little contest

[Fergal Daly]

At 22:56 22/06/00, Niall  O Broin wrote:
>On Thu, Jun 22, 2000 at 08:03:14PM +0100, Fergal Daly wrote:
>
> > perl -ne '<>;print' filename
> >
> > perl -ne 'print;<>' filename
> >
> > Hmm... just tested those last 2 and they both print only the odds, what's
> > going on there?
>
>In both of the above examples, the code which is executed prints $_ (print)
>and reads one more line from the input source (<>) - it doesn't matter which
>order they're done in - the net result is to print the odd line, and slurp
>in the even. You may be assuming that <> in scalar context is equivalent to
>$_ = <> but t'ain't so. To print the even lines, you could use
>
>perl -ne 'print $a = <>' filename

Yep, that's what I was assuming. Of course it only does this when the <> is 
the condition on a while loop, how could I have been so foolish ;-). This 
is exactly why none of the Perl I've written for years (except for quick 
one liners and pissing contests) has gone anywhere near $_, it's also why 
Perl has such a bad name for readability.


> > I don't think this'll be beat
> >
> > perl -pe '<>' filename
>
>No, I don't suppose it will :-) and it certainly won't be beat for obscurity.

Didn't think it was too obscure, -p especially combined with -i (for in 
place edit) is piece of magic everyone should know about. Anyway, it looks 
like it was beaten on all counts

Tarlach wrote
>this is 3 chars shorter :)
>
>awk 'NR%2' filename

but counting the length of the executable name just isn't cricket and the 
space between the e and the ' in mine is only there to enhance readability! 
So I reckon it's really only 1 char shorter. If you'd really wanted it 3 
chars shorter you should have left out the quotes, they're only necessary 
for the perl version (did I win?:-))

Fergal