How can I read two files from command line in Perl?

Question

How would one be able to do this? I know you have to use <>.I already tried giving it a shot,but it might just because I am on Windows.

Why wouldn't you just use the `open` function to open the file *then* read the files? — Hunter McMillen, Jul 05 '13 at 20:59
My program has to be able to get the file names from command line. Example: ./program.pl file1 file2 — Michelle Moya, Jul 05 '13 at 21:01

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 05 '13 at 21:00

4

# run as:
#       perl my_script1.pl file1 file2
my ($file1, $file2) = @ARGV;
open my $fh1, '<', $file1;
open my $fh2, '<', $file2;
while (<$fh1>) {
    ... do something with $_ from $file1 ...
}
while (<$fh2>) {
    ... do something with $_ from $file2 ...
}
close $fh1;
close $fh2;

answered Jul 05 '13 at 21:00

mob

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Doesn't work on Windows,I am pretty sure it will work on Linux though,thanks! – Michelle Moya Jul 05 '13 at 21:07
I'm pretty sure it will work on Windows, too. Can you be more specific about how it doesn't work? – mob Jul 05 '13 at 21:11
Works fine on Windows. Maybe your file associations are broken. – ikegami Jul 05 '13 at 21:11

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 06 '13 at 10:19

You didn't state whether you need to treat the files differently or not. If not, then you can just use <> without needing to call open explicitly.

while (<>) {
  # Process $_
}

will work fine. When it gets to the end of the first file, <> will continue on with reading the second file. And so on until it runs out of files to read.

How can I read two files from command line in Perl?

2 Answers2