With regard to select ..

For example, perlman:perlport2 says that select is implemented only on sockets in Win32. What does that mean to you? Why would you want to select on non-sockets? That's what this Meditation was meant to be about.

Actually, I use select <filehandle> in a Perl script that runs as a CGI on a Windows NT box (ugh) and it works fine. Looking at my code, it appears that it made more sense to open the file (and catch the failure), and then pass the file handle to the subroutine, which saves STDOUT (the web page), selects the new file handle, writes to it, closes it (phew), then restores STDOUT before returning.

"Excellent. Release the hounds." -- Monty Burns.