Appending to front of a file?

[Cake]

Hi,
Instead of doing a sorting method, I was wondering if it's possible to open a file for appending to the *front* instead of the end?

ie. the following appends to the end of the file:

open(FILE, ">>database.txt");
print FILE "$topic§$currentdate§$message\n";
close(FILE);

Is there a file operator that will send the output to the front (without overwriting the file) besides the operator ">>" that sends the output to the end?

Thanks,
Cake.

 

[jerehart]

try this:

open (FILE, ">>database.txt&quot or die "Couldn't open file database.txt: $!";
seek (FILE,0,0);
print FILE "$tpic $currentdate $message\n";
close (FILE);

seek (handle, offset whence) resets the file pointer, 0 puts it the the begining of the file (FILE,0,2) puts it to the end of the file.

You could also reverse the file add what you want, in reverse, and then forward the file and you should have what you want in the front.

Miah

 

[tsdragon]

All that will do is overwrite whatever is at the beginning of the file. Unless there has been a major change in the way things work, the only way I know of to prepend to (AKA "append to the beginning of&quot a file is to write the data you want to prepend and then copy the rest of the file after that. I don't believe that opening a file for appending and setting the pointer to the beginning of the file will do what you want it to.