perldoc -f open

[...] You can put a '+' in front of the '>' or '<' to indicate you want both read and write access to the file; thus  '+<' is almost always preferred for read/write updates--the '+>' mode would clobber the file first.

OK, I read your message again. You said create.

c:\> perl -e "open FH, '+<new_file.txt'; print FH '123'; close FH;"
c:\> dir new_file.txt
[..]
File not Found
[download]

Maybe Abigail-II's file already existed/was not created by this script? At least what open and close return is checked.

If I have given the suggestion the code I posted is something you can just download and run everywhere, I've given the wrong impression. I just posted code that runs daily on my system, and that was developped purely to run on my system. It was posted mainly for educational and illustrational purposes. It should run on many systems, but some assembly will be required.

Abigail

Nice one Abigail-II :-) ++

As for me this code it's a "pure good thing" - nice idea, short code and some place left for (programmer, not the program) evolution :-)
- It works for me... but nobody said it would work for you :-P

Greetz, Tom.

Makeshifts last the longest.