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perlheredoc

What's the difference between these two Perl snippets?

print <<EOF
stuff
EOF
;


print <<EOF;
stuff
EOF

Why would you use one over the other?

Solution

  • Those two examples amount to the same thing behaviourally, but consider if you wanted to do something else after printing that block:

    print <<EOF
stuff
EOF
. "more text here";

    ...or maybe you need to test the result of the operation:

    print $unstable_filehandle <<EOF
stuff
EOF
or warn "That filehandle finally disappeared: $!";

    These examples are contrived, but you can see how sometimes it can be useful to be flexible about what code comes after the block of text.