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perlfaq5

Current Perl documentation can be found at perldoc.perl.org.

Here is our local, out-dated (pre-5.6) version:

This section deals with I/O and the ``f'' issues: filehandles, flushing, formats, and footers.

How do I flush/unbuffer an output filehandle? Why must I do this?
How do I change one line in a file/delete a line in a file/insert a line in the middle of a file/append to the beginning of a file?
How do I count the number of lines in a file?
How do I make a temporary file name?
How can I manipulate fixed-record-length files?
How can I make a filehandle local to a subroutine? How do I pass filehandles between subroutines? How do I make an array of filehandles?
How can I use a filehandle indirectly?
How can I set up a footer format to be used with write()?
How can I write() into a string?
How can I output my numbers with commas added?
How can I translate tildes (~) in a filename?
How come when I open a file read-write it wipes it out?
Why do I sometimes get an "Argument list too long" when I use <*>?
Is there a leak/bug in glob()?
How can I open a file with a leading "żçô¾" or trailing blanks?
How can I reliably rename a file?
How can I lock a file?
What can't I just open(FH, ">file.lock")?
I still don't get locking. I just want to increment the number in the file. How can I do this?
How do I randomly update a binary file?
How do I get a file's timestamp in perl?
How do I set a file's timestamp in perl?
How do I print to more than one file at once?
How can I read in a file by paragraphs?
How can I read a single character from a file? From the keyboard?
How can I tell if there's a character waiting on a filehandle?
How do I do a <CODE>tail -f</CODE> in perl?
How do I dup() a filehandle in Perl?
How do I close a file descriptor by number?
Why can't I use "C:\temp\foo" in DOS paths? What doesn't `C:\temp\foo.exe` work?
Why doesn't glob("*.*") get all the files?
Why does Perl let me delete read-only files? Why does <CODE>-i</CODE> clobber protected files? Isn't this a bug in Perl?
How do I select a random line from a file?