select and filehandlers in perl 1

[gammaman1]

Hi,

I'm trying to verify this line of code:

select( ( select( STDOUT ), $| = 1 )[ 0 ] );

this line is in a file that takes in 3 arguments.
From what I read from my oreilly book, does this mean that select will return the output filehandle if there is at least 1 arguement?

thanks,
gammaman1

 

[ishnid]

There's nothing in that line of code to do with arguments to the file. What that code does (broken down):

# selects STDOUT as the default filehandle and returns STDOUT
select( STDOUT )

# also turns on autoflush on the currently selected filehandle (STDOUT)
# return a list - first element is STDOUT (filehandle), second is 1
select( STDOUT ), $| = 1

# return only the first element of the list (the filehandle STDOUT)
( select( STDOUT ), $| = 1 )[0]

# select the return value of above (STDOUT) as the currently selected filehandle
select( ( select( STDOUT ), $| = 1 )[0] );

As you can see from my discussion above, the outer select() statement is superflous, as STDOUT is already selected as the default output filehandle (NOTE: they're `filehandles', not `filehandlers').

HTH