If what’s within the angle brackets is neither a filehandle nor a sim‐ ple scalar variable containing a filehandle name, typeglob, or typeglob reference, it is interpreted as a filename pattern to be globbed, and either a list of filenames or the next filename in the list is returned, depending on context. This distinction is determined on syn‐ tactic grounds alone. That means "<$x>" is always a readline() from an indirect handle, but "<$hash{key}>" is always a glob(). That’s because $x is a simple scalar variable, but $hash{key} is not--it’s a hash ele‐ ment. Even "<$x >" (note the extra space) is treated as "glob("$x ")", not "readline($x)". #### my $fh = $test{FH}; print <$fh>; #### use IO::Handle; print $test{FH}->getlines();