Can I prompt for user input after reading piped input on STDIN in Perl?

Question

I\'m trying to write a perl script that reads piped data, then prompts the user for input based on that data. The following script, prompt_for_action, is what I

Answer 1

On Unix-y systems, you can open the /dev/tty pseudo-file for reading.

while (<STDIN>) {
    print "from STDIN: $_";
}
close STDIN;

# oops, need to read something from the console now
open TTY, '<', '/dev/tty';
print "Enter your age: ";
chomp($age = <TTY>);
close TTY;
print "You look good for $age years old.\n";

Answer 2

Once you pipe something through STDIN, your former STDIN (keyboard input) is being replaced by the pipe. So I don't think this is possible.

Answer 3

As for non-Unix-y systems you can use the findConsole from Term::ReadLine, and then use its output like in mob's answer, e.g. instead of /dev/tty put in the output of findConsole first element.

Example on Windows:

use Term::ReadLine;
while (<STDIN>) {
    print "from STDIN: $_";
}
close STDIN;

# oops, need to read something from the console now
my $term = Term::ReadLine->new('term');
my @_IO = $term->findConsole();
my $_IN = $_IO[0];
print "INPUT is: $_IN\n";
open TTY, '<', $_IN;
print "Enter your age: ";
chomp($age = <TTY>);
close TTY;
print "You look good for $age years old.\n";

outputs:

echo SOME | perl tty.pl
from STDIN: SOME
INPUT is: CONIN$
Enter your age: 12 # you can now enter here!
You look good for 12 years old.