virtual file concatenation

When refactoring code to read from more than one file in sequence, I will
occasionally use somthing like this, which works but makes me
feel dirty:

open my $fh, "cat file1 file2 file3 |" or die $!;
while(<$fh>) {

I'd rather virtually concatenate file handles, like this:

## $fh1 $fh2 $fh3 are already open read handles
my $fh= IO::Something->new($fh1,$fh2,$fh3);
while (<$fh>) {

where $fh is an object of a class inheriting from IO::Handle (but probably
not from IO::Seekable, although that would be nice) which will read from
$fh1 until the end, then from $fh2, then from $fh3.

I've looked in CPAN but haven't seen anything, which kind of surprised me.
Is there something I've overlooked? If not, would this be a worthwhile
module?

Xho

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Re: virtual file concatenation

xhoster@gmail.com wrote:
> When refactoring code to read from more than one file in sequence, I will
> occasionally use somthing like this, which works but makes me
> feel dirty:
>
> open my $fh, "cat file1 file2 file3 |" or die $!;
> while(<$fh>) {

@ARGV = qw/ file1 file2 file3 /;
while ( <> ) {


> I'd rather virtually concatenate file handles, like this:
>
> ## $fh1 $fh2 $fh3 are already open read handles
> my $fh= IO::Something->new($fh1,$fh2,$fh3);
> while (<$fh>) {

for my $fh ( $fh1, $fh2, $fh3 ) {
while ( <$fh> ) {



John
--
Perl isn't a toolbox, but a small machine shop where you can special-order
certain sorts of tools at low cost and in short order. -- Larry Wall