How to read only the first line of a file

Question

I've been googling for a while, but I cannot find a function the read just first line of a file.

I need to read first line of a text file and extract the date from it.

new to perl.

score 66 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 11 '11 at 15:16

66

open my $file, '<', "filename.txt"; 
my $firstLine = <$file>; 
close $file;

answered Aug 11 '11 at 15:16

wespiserA

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score 7 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 11 '11 at 15:08

7

open THEFILE, "<filename.txt";
$first_line = <THEFILE>;
close THEFILE;

answered Aug 11 '11 at 15:08

Sean Bright

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You should use lexical filehandles and three argument `open`. – TLP Aug 11 '11 at 15:18

Jakub M. · Answer 3 · 2014-10-22T16:28:13.923

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open( my $file, "x.txt");
$line = <$file>;

edited Oct 22 '14 at 16:28

answered Aug 11 '11 at 15:08

Jakub M.

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score 1 · Answer 4 · answered May 24 '16 at 10:24

1

... a modern and popular alternative:

use Path::Tiny;
(my $firstline) = path('filename.txt')->lines( { count => 1 } );

For more info https://metacpan.org/pod/Path::Tiny#lines-lines_raw-lines_utf8

Note: since ->lines is returning a list, calling it without the brackets around $firstline it will be assigned the number of lines which have been read from filename.txt: 1 (or 0 if it's empty).

answered May 24 '16 at 10:24

illy

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You might want to `chomp $firstline;` or the value could have a newline at the end and that might not be something you want. – joehep Feb 20 '20 at 21:00

How to read only the first line of a file

4 Answers4

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