read(FH,$buffer,2**31 - 1)

Hmm.  Why doesn't Perl like reading a lot from STDIN?

  perl -Mdiagnostics -e 'read(FOO,$FOO,2 ** 31 - 1)'

runs smoothly.

  perl -Mdiagnostics -e 'read(STDIN,$STDIN,2 ** 31 - 1)'

Out of memory during "large" request for -2147479552 bytes at -e line 1
(#1)

    (F) The malloc() function returned 0, indicating there was insufficient
    remaining memory (or virtual memory) to satisfy the request. However,
    the request was judged large enough (compile-time default is 64K), so
    a possibility to shut down by trapping this error is granted.

-- 
MIDN 4/C PINYAN, NROTCURPI, US Naval Reserve             japhy@pobox.com
http://www.pobox.com/~japhy/                  http://pinyaj.stu.rpi.edu/
PerlMonth - An Online Perl Magazine            http://www.perlmonth.com/
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• read(FH,$buffer,2**31 - 1) by Jeff Pinyan
• Re: read(FH,$buffer,2**31 - 1) by Tom Christiansen