Re: Maximum length input line

At 10:06 AM 8/20/00 -0400, Bryan C. Warnock wrote:
>On Sun, 20 Aug 2000, Peter Scott wrote:
>
> > I read that before I made my posting; it looked to me that :block was
> > specifying a fixed-length read independent of line terminators, i.e., same
> > behavior as $/ = \1024.
>
>Stand-alone, I guess it would be.  But I would think that combining it
>with, say, :text=unix, should give you the behavior you'd want.
>(Assuming, of course, that this is the way it's going to work.)

Well you guys are way ahead of me on your line discipline modes, so I 
didn't want to hazard a syntax; just wanted to make my desires known.

> > >(And I'll add, I don't think the rest of the line should be thrown
> > >away.)
> >
> > No harm in making the choice another mode switch, no?
>
>As in reading the first n columns?
>
>:col=1024
>
>Read the first 1024 columns of each line, and if the line happens to
>be shorter than 1024, so be it?

That's what I was looking for, but the other choice I was talking about was 
whether the excess is thrown away or comes in on the next read.  So there 
are these 3 scenarios when a line longer than the user's desired maximum 
arrives:

# No options changed, i.e., current behavior
$line = <FOO>;  # $line gets whatever the input was

# Maximum input length set to $MAXLEN
# Excess is thrown away
$line = <FOO>;  # $length($line) == $MAXLEN
$line = <FOO>;  # $line is filled from after last line terminator

# Maximum input length set to $MAXLEN
# Excess left in input buffer
$line = <FOO>;  # $length($line) == $MAXLEN
$line = <FOO>;  # $line filled starting from next character after previous 
$line

--
Peter Scott
Pacific Systems Design Technologies