- read
FILEHANDLE,SCALAR,LENGTH,OFFSET
-
- read FILEHANDLE,SCALAR,LENGTH
-
Attempts to read LENGTH characters of data into variable SCALAR from the
specified FILEHANDLE. Returns the number of characters actually read, 0 at
end of file, or undef if there was an error. SCALAR will be grown or shrunk to the length
actually read. If SCALAR needs growing, the new bytes will be zero bytes. An OFFSET may be
specified to place the read data into some other place in SCALAR than the beginning. The
call is actually implemented in terms of either Perl's or system's fread() call. To get a
true read(2) system call, see sysread.
Note the characters: depending on the status of the filehandle, either (8-bit)
bytes or characters are read. By default all filehandles operate on bytes, but for example
if the filehandle has been opened with the :utf8 I/O layer (see /open, and the open
pragma, open), the I/O will
operate on characters, not bytes.
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