input <>; not working?

From: Billy (bustanut2020_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 12/22/04 

Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 04:17:59 GMT

I ran into a problem that I went round-and-round on until I broke an input
to the simplest test code I could think of and it still doesn't work...

print "Enter a number: ";
$number = <>;
print "The number is $number.\n";

or

$number = <STDIN>;
print STDOUT "The number is $number.\n";

What happens with both attempts is it prints:

Enter a number: The number is.

without pausing for an input.....

All other parts of my code works except when I want to get an input from the
keyboard....
What am I missing?

Billy