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.
+A few things to notice. First, the leading C<< < >> is optional.
If omitted, Perl assumes that you want to open the file for reading.
Note also that the first example uses the C<||> logical operator, and the
conflicts.
Another convenient behavior is that an indirect filehandle automatically
-closes when it goes out of scope or when you undefine it:
+closes when there are no more references to it:
sub firstline {
open( my $in, shift ) && return scalar <$in>;
# no close() required
}
+Indirect filehandles also make it easy to pass filehandles to and return
+filehandles from subroutines:
+
+ for my $file ( qw(this.conf that.conf) ) {
+ my $fin = open_or_throw('<', $file);
+ process_conf( $fin );
+ # no close() needed
+ }
+
+ use Carp;
+ sub open_or_throw {
+ my ($mode, $filename) = @_;
+ open my $h, $mode, $filename
+ or croak "Could not open '$filename': $!";
+ return $h;
+ }
+
=head2 Pipe Opens
In C, when you want to open a file using the standard I/O library,
Why so permissive? Well, it isn't really. The MASK will be modified
by your process's current C<umask>. A umask is a number representing
I<disabled> permissions bits; that is, bits that will not be turned on
-in the created files' permissions field.
+in the created file's permissions field.
For example, if your C<umask> were 027, then the 020 part would
disable the group from writing, and the 007 part would disable others