Please log in if you wish to comment on somebody's code looking "dodgy". Yes, this is a usage you're not familiar with. Please read perldoc -f open. The "or die" is skipped because this is for a presentation - it has to fit on a slide and be visual and understandable by the attendees in the few seconds that I have to show it to them. Plus if you can give me a reason they might fail on a unix system I'll be a lot more interested in your comment ;-)