$ myprogram file1 file2 file3
$ myprogram < inputfile
$ myprogram > outputfile
$ myprogram >> outputfile
$ myprogram | otherprogram
$ otherprogram | myprogram
And here are some more advanced examples:
$ otherprogram | myprogram f1 - f2
$ otherprogram 2>&1 | myprogram -
$ myprogram <&3
$ myprogram >&4
Programmers accustomed to constructs like those above can take comfort in learning that Perl directly supports these familiar constructs using virtually the same syntax as the shell.
For example:
open(INFO, "datafile") || die("can't open datafile: $!");
open(INFO, "< datafile") || die("can't open datafile: $!");
open(RESULTS,"> runstats") || die("can't open runstats: $!");
open(LOG, ">> logfile ") || die("can't open logfile: $!");
If you prefer the low-punctuation version, you could write that this way:
open INFO, "< datafile" or die "can't open datafile: $!";
open RESULTS,"> runstats" or die "can't open runstats: $!";
open LOG, ">> logfile " or die "can't open logfile: $!";
A few things to notice. First, the leading less-than is optional. If omitted, Perl assumes that you want to open the file for reading.
Note also that the first example uses the "||" logical operator, and the second uses "or", which has lower precedence. Using "||" in the latter examples would effectively mean
open INFO, ( "< datafile" || die "can't open datafile: $!" );
which is definitely not what you want.
The other important thing to notice is that, just as in the shell, any whitespace before or after the filename is ignored. This is good, because you wouldn't want these to do different things:
open INFO, "<datafile"
open INFO, "< datafile"
open INFO, "< datafile"
Ignoring surrounding whitespace also helps for when you read a filename in from a different file, and forget to trim it before opening:
$filename = <INFO>; # oops, \n still there
open(EXTRA, "< $filename") || die "can't open $filename: $!";
This is not a bug, but a feature. Because "open" mimics the shell in its style of using redirection arrows to specify how to open the file, it also does so with respect to extra whitespace around the filename itself as well. For accessing files with naughty names, see ``Dispelling the Dweomer''.
There is also a 3-argument version of "open", which lets you put the special redirection characters into their own argument:
open( INFO, ">", $datafile ) || die "Can't create $datafile: $!";
In this case, the filename to open is the actual string in $datafile, so you don't have to worry about $datafile containing characters that might influence the open mode, or whitespace at the beginning of the filename that would be absorbed in the 2-argument version. Also, any reduction of unnecessary string interpolation is a good thing.
open( my $in, $infile ) or die "Couldn't read $infile: $!";
while ( <$in> ) {
# do something with $_
}
close $in;
Indirect filehandles make namespace management easier. Since filehandles are global to the current package, two subroutines trying to open "INFILE" will clash. With two functions opening indirect filehandles like "my $infile", there's no clash and no need to worry about future conflicts.
Another convenient behavior is that an indirect filehandle automatically closes when it goes out of scope or when you undefine it:
sub firstline {
open( my $in, shift ) && return scalar <$in>;
# no close() required
}
If the leading character is a pipe symbol, "open" starts up a new command and opens a write-only filehandle leading into that command. This lets you write into that handle and have what you write show up on that command's standard input. For example:
open(PRINTER, "| lpr -Plp1") || die "can't run lpr: $!";
print PRINTER "stuff\n";
close(PRINTER) || die "can't close lpr: $!";
If the trailing character is a pipe, you start up a new command and open a read-only filehandle leading out of that command. This lets whatever that command writes to its standard output show up on your handle for reading. For example:
open(NET, "netstat -i -n |") || die "can't fork netstat: $!";
while (<NET>) { } # do something with input
close(NET) || die "can't close netstat: $!";
What happens if you try to open a pipe to or from a non-existent command? If possible, Perl will detect the failure and set $! as usual. But if the command contains special shell characters, such as ">" or "*", called 'metacharacters', Perl does not execute the command directly. Instead, Perl runs the shell, which then tries to run the command. This means that it's the shell that gets the error indication. In such a case, the "open" call will only indicate failure if Perl can't even run the shell. See ``How can I capture STDERR from an external command?'' in perlfaq8 to see how to cope with this. There's also an explanation in perlipc.
If you would like to open a bidirectional pipe, the IPC::Open2 library will handle this for you. Check out ``Bidirectional Communication with Another Process'' in perlipc
If minus can be used as the default input or default output, what happens if you open a pipe into or out of minus? What's the default command it would run? The same script as you're currently running! This is actually a stealth "fork" hidden inside an "open" call. See ``Safe Pipe Opens'' in perlipc for details.
open(WTMP, "+< /usr/adm/wtmp")
|| die "can't open /usr/adm/wtmp: $!";
open(SCREEN, "+> lkscreen")
|| die "can't open lkscreen: $!";
open(LOGFILE, "+>> /var/log/applog")
|| die "can't open /var/log/applog: $!";
The first one won't create a new file, and the second one will always clobber an old one. The third one will create a new file if necessary and not clobber an old one, and it will allow you to read at any point in the file, but all writes will always go to the end. In short, the first case is substantially more common than the second and third cases, which are almost always wrong. (If you know C, the plus in Perl's "open" is historically derived from the one in C's fopen(3S), which it ultimately calls.)
In fact, when it comes to updating a file, unless you're working on a binary file as in the WTMP case above, you probably don't want to use this approach for updating. Instead, Perl's -i flag comes to the rescue. The following command takes all the C, C++, or yacc source or header files and changes all their foo's to bar's, leaving the old version in the original filename with a ``.orig'' tacked on the end:
$ perl -i.orig -pe 's/\bfoo\b/bar/g' *.[Cchy]
This is a short cut for some renaming games that are really the best way to update textfiles. See the second question in perlfaq5 for more details.
$ myprogram file1 file2 file3
can have all its files opened and processed one at a time using a construct no more complex than:
while (<>) {
# do something with $_
}
If @ARGV is empty when the loop first begins, Perl pretends you've opened up minus, that is, the standard input. In fact, $ARGV, the currently open file during "<ARGV>" processing, is even set to ``-'' in these circumstances.
You are welcome to pre-process your @ARGV before starting the loop to make sure it's to your liking. One reason to do this might be to remove command options beginning with a minus. While you can always roll the simple ones by hand, the Getopts modules are good for this:
use Getopt::Std;
# -v, -D, -o ARG, sets $opt_v, $opt_D, $opt_o
getopts("vDo:");
# -v, -D, -o ARG, sets $args{v}, $args{D}, $args{o}
getopts("vDo:", \%args);
Or the standard Getopt::Long module to permit named arguments:
use Getopt::Long;
GetOptions( "verbose" => \$verbose, # --verbose
"Debug" => \$debug, # --Debug
"output=s" => \$output );
# --output=somestring or --output somestring
Another reason for preprocessing arguments is to make an empty argument list default to all files:
@ARGV = glob("*") unless @ARGV;
You could even filter out all but plain, text files. This is a bit silent, of course, and you might prefer to mention them on the way.
@ARGV = grep { -f && -T } @ARGV;
If you're using the -n or -p command-line options, you should put changes to @ARGV in a "BEGIN{}" block.
Remember that a normal "open" has special properties, in that it might call fopen(3S) or it might called popen(3S), depending on what its argument looks like; that's why it's sometimes called ``magic open''. Here's an example:
$pwdinfo = `domainname` =~ /^(\(none\))?$/
? '< /etc/passwd'
: 'ypcat passwd |';
open(PWD, $pwdinfo)
or die "can't open $pwdinfo: $!";
This sort of thing also comes into play in filter processing. Because "<ARGV>" processing employs the normal, shell-style Perl "open", it respects all the special things we've already seen:
$ myprogram f1 "cmd1|" - f2 "cmd2|" f3 < tmpfile
That program will read from the file f1, the process cmd1, standard input (tmpfile in this case), the f2 file, the cmd2 command, and finally the f3 file.
Yes, this also means that if you have files named ``-'' (and so on) in your directory, they won't be processed as literal files by "open". You'll need to pass them as ``./-'', much as you would for the rm program, or you could use "sysopen" as described below.
One of the more interesting applications is to change files of a certain name into pipes. For example, to autoprocess gzipped or compressed files by decompressing them with gzip:
@ARGV = map { /^\.(gz|Z)$/ ? "gzip -dc $_ |" : $_ } @ARGV;
Or, if you have the GET program installed from LWP, you can fetch URLs before processing them:
@ARGV = map { m#^\w+://# ? "GET $_ |" : $_ } @ARGV;
It's not for nothing that this is called magic "<ARGV>". Pretty nifty, eh?
"sysopen" takes 3 (or 4) arguments.
sysopen HANDLE, PATH, FLAGS, [MASK]
The HANDLE argument is a filehandle just as with "open". The PATH is a literal path, one that doesn't pay attention to any greater-thans or less-thans or pipes or minuses, nor ignore whitespace. If it's there, it's part of the path. The FLAGS argument contains one or more values derived from the Fcntl module that have been or'd together using the bitwise ``|'' operator. The final argument, the MASK, is optional; if present, it is combined with the user's current umask for the creation mode of the file. You should usually omit this.
Although the traditional values of read-only, write-only, and read-write are 0, 1, and 2 respectively, this is known not to hold true on some systems. Instead, it's best to load in the appropriate constants first from the Fcntl module, which supplies the following standard flags:
O_RDONLY Read only
O_WRONLY Write only
O_RDWR Read and write
O_CREAT Create the file if it doesn't exist
O_EXCL Fail if the file already exists
O_APPEND Append to the file
O_TRUNC Truncate the file
O_NONBLOCK Non-blocking access
Less common flags that are sometimes available on some operating systems include "O_BINARY", "O_TEXT", "O_SHLOCK", "O_EXLOCK", "O_DEFER", "O_SYNC", "O_ASYNC", "O_DSYNC", "O_RSYNC", "O_NOCTTY", "O_NDELAY" and "O_LARGEFILE". Consult your open(2) manpage or its local equivalent for details. (Note: starting from Perl release 5.6 the "O_LARGEFILE" flag, if available, is automatically added to the sysopen() flags because large files are the default.)
Here's how to use "sysopen" to emulate the simple "open" calls we had before. We'll omit the "|| die $!" checks for clarity, but make sure you always check the return values in real code. These aren't quite the same, since "open" will trim leading and trailing whitespace, but you'll get the idea.
To open a file for reading:
open(FH, "< $path");
sysopen(FH, $path, O_RDONLY);
To open a file for writing, creating a new file if needed or else truncating an old file:
open(FH, "> $path");
sysopen(FH, $path, O_WRONLY | O_TRUNC | O_CREAT);
To open a file for appending, creating one if necessary:
open(FH, ">> $path");
sysopen(FH, $path, O_WRONLY | O_APPEND | O_CREAT);
To open a file for update, where the file must already exist:
open(FH, "+< $path");
sysopen(FH, $path, O_RDWR);
And here are things you can do with "sysopen" that you cannot do with a regular "open". As you'll see, it's just a matter of controlling the flags in the third argument.
To open a file for writing, creating a new file which must not previously exist:
sysopen(FH, $path, O_WRONLY | O_EXCL | O_CREAT);
To open a file for appending, where that file must already exist:
sysopen(FH, $path, O_WRONLY | O_APPEND);
To open a file for update, creating a new file if necessary:
sysopen(FH, $path, O_RDWR | O_CREAT);
To open a file for update, where that file must not already exist:
sysopen(FH, $path, O_RDWR | O_EXCL | O_CREAT);
To open a file without blocking, creating one if necessary:
sysopen(FH, $path, O_WRONLY | O_NONBLOCK | O_CREAT);
Why so permissive? Well, it isn't really. The MASK will be modified by your process's current "umask". A umask is a number representing disabled permissions bits; that is, bits that will not be turned on in the created files' permissions field.
For example, if your "umask" were 027, then the 020 part would disable the group from writing, and the 007 part would disable others from reading, writing, or executing. Under these conditions, passing "sysopen" 0666 would create a file with mode 0640, since "0666 & ~027" is 0640.
You should seldom use the MASK argument to "sysopen()". That takes away the user's freedom to choose what permission new files will have. Denying choice is almost always a bad thing. One exception would be for cases where sensitive or private data is being stored, such as with mail folders, cookie files, and internal temporary files.
open(SAVEOUT, ">&SAVEERR") || die "couldn't dup SAVEERR: $!";
open(MHCONTEXT, "<&4") || die "couldn't dup fd4: $!";
That means that if a function is expecting a filename, but you don't want to give it a filename because you already have the file open, you can just pass the filehandle with a leading ampersand. It's best to use a fully qualified handle though, just in case the function happens to be in a different package:
somefunction("&main::LOGFILE");
This way if somefunction() is planning on opening its argument, it can just use the already opened handle. This differs from passing a handle, because with a handle, you don't open the file. Here you have something you can pass to open.
If you have one of those tricky, newfangled I/O objects that the C++ folks are raving about, then this doesn't work because those aren't a proper filehandle in the native Perl sense. You'll have to use fileno() to pull out the proper descriptor number, assuming you can:
use IO::Socket;
$handle = IO::Socket::INET->new("www.perl.com:80");
$fd = $handle->fileno;
somefunction("&$fd"); # not an indirect function call
It can be easier (and certainly will be faster) just to use real filehandles though:
use IO::Socket;
local *REMOTE = IO::Socket::INET->new("www.perl.com:80");
die "can't connect" unless defined(fileno(REMOTE));
somefunction("&main::REMOTE");
If the filehandle or descriptor number is preceded not just with a simple ``&'' but rather with a ``&='' combination, then Perl will not create a completely new descriptor opened to the same place using the dup(2) system call. Instead, it will just make something of an alias to the existing one using the fdopen(3S) library call. This is slightly more parsimonious of systems resources, although this is less a concern these days. Here's an example of that:
$fd = $ENV{"MHCONTEXTFD"};
open(MHCONTEXT, "<&=$fd") or die "couldn't fdopen $fd: $!";
If you're using magic "<ARGV>", you could even pass in as a command line argument in @ARGV something like "<&=$MHCONTEXTFD", but we've never seen anyone actually do this.
If magic "open" is a bit too magical for you, you don't have to turn to "sysopen". To open a file with arbitrary weird characters in it, it's necessary to protect any leading and trailing whitespace. Leading whitespace is protected by inserting a "./" in front of a filename that starts with whitespace. Trailing whitespace is protected by appending an ASCII NUL byte ("\0") at the end of the string.
$file =~ s#^(\s)#./$1#;
open(FH, "< $file\0") || die "can't open $file: $!";
This assumes, of course, that your system considers dot the current working directory, slash the directory separator, and disallows ASCII NULs within a valid filename. Most systems follow these conventions, including all POSIX systems as well as proprietary Microsoft systems. The only vaguely popular system that doesn't work this way is the ``Classic'' Macintosh system, which uses a colon where the rest of us use a slash. Maybe "sysopen" isn't such a bad idea after all.
If you want to use "<ARGV>" processing in a totally boring and non-magical way, you could do this first:
# "Sam sat on the ground and put his head in his hands.
# 'I wish I had never come here, and I don't want to see
# no more magic,' he said, and fell silent."
for (@ARGV) {
s#^([^./])#./$1#;
$_ .= "\0";
}
while (<>) {
# now process $_
}
But be warned that users will not appreciate being unable to use ``-'' to mean standard input, per the standard convention.
Some warning at scriptname line 29, <FH> line 7.
That's because you opened a filehandle FH, and had read in seven records from it. But what was the name of the file, rather than the handle?
If you aren't running with "strict refs", or if you've turned them off temporarily, then all you have to do is this:
open($path, "< $path") || die "can't open $path: $!";
while (<$path>) {
# whatever
}
Since you're using the pathname of the file as its handle, you'll get warnings more like
Some warning at scriptname line 29, </etc/motd> line 7.
$FILE = "/etc/motd";
open FILE or die "can't open $FILE: $!";
while (<FILE>) {
# whatever
}
Why is this here? Someone has to cater to the hysterical porpoises. It's something that's been in Perl since the very beginning, if not before.
END { close(STDOUT) || die "can't close stdout: $!" }
If you don't do this, and your program fills up the disk partition due to a command line redirection, it won't report the error exit with a failure status.
You don't have to accept the STDIN and STDOUT you were given. You are welcome to reopen them if you'd like.
open(STDIN, "< datafile")
|| die "can't open datafile: $!";
open(STDOUT, "> output")
|| die "can't open output: $!";
And then these can be accessed directly or passed on to subprocesses. This makes it look as though the program were initially invoked with those redirections from the command line.
It's probably more interesting to connect these to pipes. For example:
$pager = $ENV{PAGER} || "(less || more)";
open(STDOUT, "| $pager")
|| die "can't fork a pager: $!";
This makes it appear as though your program were called with its stdout already piped into your pager. You can also use this kind of thing in conjunction with an implicit fork to yourself. You might do this if you would rather handle the post processing in your own program, just in a different process:
head(100);
while (<>) {
print;
}
sub head {
my $lines = shift || 20;
return if $pid = open(STDOUT, "|-"); # return if parent
die "cannot fork: $!" unless defined $pid;
while (<STDIN>) {
last if --$lines < 0;
print;
}
exit;
}
This technique can be applied to repeatedly push as many filters on your output stream as you wish.
if (-l $file || ! -f _) {
print "$file is not a plain file\n";
}
What other kinds of files are there than, well, files? Directories, symbolic links, named pipes, Unix-domain sockets, and block and character devices. Those are all files, too---just not plain files. This isn't the same issue as being a text file. Not all text files are plain files. Not all plain files are text files. That's why there are separate "-f" and "-T" file tests.
To open a directory, you should use the "opendir" function, then process it with "readdir", carefully restoring the directory name if necessary:
opendir(DIR, $dirname) or die "can't opendir $dirname: $!";
while (defined($file = readdir(DIR))) {
# do something with "$dirname/$file"
}
closedir(DIR);
If you want to process directories recursively, it's better to use the File::Find module. For example, this prints out all files recursively and adds a slash to their names if the file is a directory.
@ARGV = qw(.) unless @ARGV;
use File::Find;
find sub { print $File::Find::name, -d && '/', "\n" }, @ARGV;
This finds all bogus symbolic links beneath a particular directory:
find sub { print "$File::Find::name\n" if -l && !-e }, $dir;
As you see, with symbolic links, you can just pretend that it is what it points to. Or, if you want to know what it points to, then "readlink" is called for:
if (-l $file) {
if (defined($whither = readlink($file))) {
print "$file points to $whither\n";
} else {
print "$file points nowhere: $!\n";
}
}
When it comes to opening devices, it can be easy and it can be tricky. We'll assume that if you're opening up a block device, you know what you're doing. The character devices are more interesting. These are typically used for modems, mice, and some kinds of printers. This is described in ``How do I read and write the serial port?'' in perlfaq8 It's often enough to open them carefully:
sysopen(TTYIN, "/dev/ttyS1", O_RDWR | O_NDELAY | O_NOCTTY)
# (O_NOCTTY no longer needed on POSIX systems)
or die "can't open /dev/ttyS1: $!";
open(TTYOUT, "+>&TTYIN")
or die "can't dup TTYIN: $!";
$ofh = select(TTYOUT); $| = 1; select($ofh);
print TTYOUT "+++at\015";
$answer = <TTYIN>;
With descriptors that you haven't opened using "sysopen", such as sockets, you can set them to be non-blocking using "fcntl":
use Fcntl;
my $old_flags = fcntl($handle, F_GETFL, 0)
or die "can't get flags: $!";
fcntl($handle, F_SETFL, $old_flags | O_NONBLOCK)
or die "can't set non blocking: $!";
Rather than losing yourself in a morass of twisting, turning "ioctl"s, all dissimilar, if you're going to manipulate ttys, it's best to make calls out to the stty(1) program if you have it, or else use the portable POSIX interface. To figure this all out, you'll need to read the termios(3) manpage, which describes the POSIX interface to tty devices, and then POSIX, which describes Perl's interface to POSIX. There are also some high-level modules on CPAN that can help you with these games. Check out Term::ReadKey and Term::ReadLine.
use IO::Socket;
local *FH = IO::Socket::INET->new("www.perl.com:80");
For opening up a URL, the LWP modules from CPAN are just what the doctor ordered. There's no filehandle interface, but it's still easy to get the contents of a document:
use LWP::Simple;
$doc = get('http://www.linpro.no/lwp/');
Another option is to use the "binmode" function on the appropriate handles before doing regular I/O on them:
binmode(STDIN);
binmode(STDOUT);
while (<STDIN>) { print }
Passing "sysopen" a non-standard flag option will also open the file in binary mode on those systems that support it. This is the equivalent of opening the file normally, then calling "binmode" on the handle.
sysopen(BINDAT, "records.data", O_RDWR | O_BINARY)
|| die "can't open records.data: $!";
Now you can use "read" and "print" on that handle without worrying about the non-standard system I/O library breaking your data. It's not a pretty picture, but then, legacy systems seldom are. CP/M will be with us until the end of days, and after.
On systems with exotic I/O systems, it turns out that, astonishingly enough, even unbuffered I/O using "sysread" and "syswrite" might do sneaky data mutilation behind your back.
while (sysread(WHENCE, $buf, 1024)) {
syswrite(WHITHER, $buf, length($buf));
}
Depending on the vicissitudes of your runtime system, even these calls may need "binmode" or "O_BINARY" first. Systems known to be free of such difficulties include Unix, the Mac OS, Plan 9, and Inferno.
Never use the existence of a file "-e $file" as a locking indication, because there is a race condition between the test for the existence of the file and its creation. It's possible for another process to create a file in the slice of time between your existence check and your attempt to create the file. Atomicity is critical.
Perl's most portable locking interface is via the "flock" function, whose simplicity is emulated on systems that don't directly support it such as SysV or Windows. The underlying semantics may affect how it all works, so you should learn how "flock" is implemented on your system's port of Perl.
File locking does not lock out another process that would like to do I/O. A file lock only locks out others trying to get a lock, not processes trying to do I/O. Because locks are advisory, if one process uses locking and another doesn't, all bets are off.
By default, the "flock" call will block until a lock is granted. A request for a shared lock will be granted as soon as there is no exclusive locker. A request for an exclusive lock will be granted as soon as there is no locker of any kind. Locks are on file descriptors, not file names. You can't lock a file until you open it, and you can't hold on to a lock once the file has been closed.
Here's how to get a blocking shared lock on a file, typically used for reading:
use 5.004;
use Fcntl qw(:DEFAULT :flock);
open(FH, "< filename") or die "can't open filename: $!";
flock(FH, LOCK_SH) or die "can't lock filename: $!";
# now read from FH
You can get a non-blocking lock by using "LOCK_NB".
flock(FH, LOCK_SH | LOCK_NB)
or die "can't lock filename: $!";
This can be useful for producing more user-friendly behaviour by warning if you're going to be blocking:
use 5.004;
use Fcntl qw(:DEFAULT :flock);
open(FH, "< filename") or die "can't open filename: $!";
unless (flock(FH, LOCK_SH | LOCK_NB)) {
$| = 1;
print "Waiting for lock...";
flock(FH, LOCK_SH) or die "can't lock filename: $!";
print "got it.\n"
}
# now read from FH
To get an exclusive lock, typically used for writing, you have to be careful. We "sysopen" the file so it can be locked before it gets emptied. You can get a nonblocking version using "LOCK_EX | LOCK_NB".
use 5.004;
use Fcntl qw(:DEFAULT :flock);
sysopen(FH, "filename", O_WRONLY | O_CREAT)
or die "can't open filename: $!";
flock(FH, LOCK_EX)
or die "can't lock filename: $!";
truncate(FH, 0)
or die "can't truncate filename: $!";
# now write to FH
Finally, due to the uncounted millions who cannot be dissuaded from wasting cycles on useless vanity devices called hit counters, here's how to increment a number in a file safely:
use Fcntl qw(:DEFAULT :flock);
sysopen(FH, "numfile", O_RDWR | O_CREAT)
or die "can't open numfile: $!";
# autoflush FH
$ofh = select(FH); $| = 1; select ($ofh);
flock(FH, LOCK_EX)
or die "can't write-lock numfile: $!";
$num = <FH> || 0;
seek(FH, 0, 0)
or die "can't rewind numfile : $!";
print FH $num+1, "\n"
or die "can't write numfile: $!";
truncate(FH, tell(FH))
or die "can't truncate numfile: $!";
close(FH)
or die "can't close numfile: $!";
Full discussion about the features of PerlIO is out of scope for this tutorial, but here is how to recognize the layers being used:
open(my $fh, "<:crlf", $fn);
binmode($fh, ":encoding(utf16)");
For more detailed discussion about PerlIO see PerlIO; for more detailed discussion about Unicode and I/O see perluniintro.
This documentation is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples in these files are hereby placed into the public domain. You are permitted and encouraged to use this code in your own programs for fun or for profit as you see fit. A simple comment in the code giving credit would be courteous but is not required.