PERL/C3/File-Handling/English-timed

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Time Narration
00:01 Welcome to the Spoken Tutorial on File Handling in PERL.
00:06 In this tutorial we will learn how to
  • Open a file in read mode
  • Write to a file
  • Open a file in append mode
  • Close the file handle
00:17 For this tutorial, I am using
  • Ubuntu Linux 12.04 operating system
  • Perl 5.14.2
  • and the gedit Text Editor
00:28 You can use any text editor of your choice.
00:32 To follow this tutorial, you should have working knowledge of Perl programming.
00:37 If not, then go through the relevant Perl spoken tutorials on the spoken tutorial website.
00:43 The basic operations we can do with files in Perl are:
  • open a file
  • read from a file
  • write to a file and
  • close a file
00:54 The default file handles are
  • STDIN
  • STDOUT
  • STDERR
01:02 This is the syntax for open function.
01:05 In the syntax, FILEHANDLE is the file handle returned by the open function.
01:11 MODE represents the mode of opening the file. For eg: read, write, etc.
01:18 EXPR is the physical filename used to read or write. In this case, “First.txt” is the filename.
01:27 There is another way to write the open function, as shown here.
01:32 Let us understand how to open an existing file and read the data from it.
01:38 First we will create a text file and store some data in it. Go to the terminal and type gedit first.txt and press Enter.
01:51 In the first dot txt file, type the following text:
01:55 Save the file and close gedit.
01:59 Now we will look at a Perl program that opens the file first.txt and reads the content.
02:07 Let me open the sample program openfile.pl which I have already saved.
02:13 Type gedit openfile dot pl ampersand and press Enter.
02:19 In the openfile dot pl file, type the following code as displayed on the screen.
02:25 Let us understand the code now.
02:28 The open function opens a file for reading.
02:33 The first parameter DATA is the filehandle which allows Perl to refer to the file in future.
02:40 The second parameter “<” less than symbol denotes the READ mode.
02:44 If you fail to specify the “Mode”, by default the file will be opened in “READ” mode.
02:50 The third parameter first.txt is the filename from where the data has to be read.
02:57 What will happen if the file first.txt does not exist?
03:02 The script will die with the appropriate error message stored in the dollar exclamation ($!)variable.
03:08 The while loop will read line by line and loop through the <DATA> file
until all the lines have been read.
03:17 Print dollar underscore ($_) variable will print the contents of the current line.
03:22 Lastly, close the file with the FILEHANDLE name, which we had given in the open statement.


03:29 Closing a file prevents any accidental file changes or overwriting of the content.
03:36 Now, press Ctrl+S to save the file.
03:40 Let us execute the program.
03:42 Switch back to the terminal and type perl openfile dot pl and press Enter.
03:51 The output is displayed as shown.
03:54 This is the same content that we saw earlier in first dot txt file.
03:59 Next we will see how to write data into a file.
04:03 The open statement with greater than (>) symbol defines the WRITE mode.
04:08 Filename represents the name of the file where the data has to be written.
04:13 Let me open the sample program writefile.pl which I have already saved.
04:19 Switch to the terminal.
04:21 Now, type gedit writefile dot pl ampersand and press Enter.
04:29 In the writefile dot pl file, type the following code as displayed on the screen.
04:34 Let me explain the code now.
04:37 The open function opens a file second.txt in write mode.
04:44 “>” Greater than symbol before the filename denotes the write mode.
04:49 The first parameter FILE1 is the FILEHANDLE.
04:53 The print function prints the given text to FILEHANDLE. i.e FILE1
04:59 Now, press Ctrl+S to save the file
05:03 Let us execute the program.
05:05 Switch back to the terminal and type perl writefile dot pl and press Enter.
05:12 Now let us check whether the text has been written in second.txt file.
05:18 Type gedit second.txt and press Enter.
05:23 We can see the text Working with files makes data storage and retrieval a simple task! In our second.txt file.
05:32 Let us close the second.txt file.
05:35 What will happen if we open the same file again in write mode? Let us see that.
05:41 In the writefile.pl, Comment the previous print Statement.
05:46 Add the below print command.
05:48 Now, press Ctrl+S to save the file. Let us execute the program.
05:54 Switch back to the terminal and type perl writefile dot pl and press Enter.
06:00 Now let us check the second.txt file once again.
06:04 Type gedit second.txt and press Enter.
06:09 We can see the output “Greater than symbol (>) will overwrite the content of the file!"
06:14 The previous content of the second.txt file has been overwritten.
06:19 This is because we had opened the file in the write mode again.
06:24 Let us close the second.txt file.
06:27 Next, we will see how to append data to an existing file.
06:32 The open statement with two greater than (>> ) symbols denotes the APPEND mode.
06:38 Now I will open the writefile dot pl again in gedit.


06:44 In the open statement, type two greater (>>) than symbols. This will denote that the file is in append mode.
06:52 Comment the previous print statement as it is already executed.
06:57 Add the line print FILE1 within double quotes Two greater than symbols >> opens the file in append mode to append to the existing data.
07:07 Now, press Ctrl+S to save the file.
07:11 Let us execute the program.
07:14 Switch back to the terminal and type perl writefile dot pl and press Enter.
07:20 Now let us check whether the text has been appended to the second.txt file.
07:26 Type gedit second.txt and press Enter.
07:31 We can see the text has been appended in our second.txt file.
07:36 Let us close the second.txt file.
07:39 Similarly, there are other modes also.
07:42 Try out these options on your own and understand what happens.
07:49 This brings us to the end of this tutorial. Let us summarise.
07:53 In this tutorial we learnt to
  • Open a file in read mode
  • Write to a file
  • Open a file in append mode and
  • Close the file handle
08:03 Here is an assignment for you.

Change the file attribute to +> in the writefile.pl program.

08:11 Save and execute the program.
08:14 Open the second.txt file to see the output.
08:17 Analyse the usage of file attribute +>
08:22 The video at the following link summarises the Spoken Tutorial project.

Please download and watch it

08:29 The Spoken Tutorial Project Team
  • conducts workshops using spoken tutorials and
  • gives certificates on passing online tests.
08:37 For more details, please write to us.
08:41 Spoken Tutorial project is funded by NMEICT, MHRD, Government of India.
08:48 More information on this mission is available at this link.
08:53 This is Nirmala Venkat from IIT Bombay, signing off. Thanks for watching.

Contributors and Content Editors

PoojaMoolya, Sandhya.np14