if I remember correctly, the handle will close when it goes out of scope or the script terminates, but some one else will have to verify that, I can't find where it says that in any of my books right now. on that not note, if you can you would be better off closing the handle yourself right be fore the last statement.
as far as the print HANDLE "statement" or last; have you tried it, the worste that would happen is it wouldn't work. I don't know. I'm going to run a test script to see what happens and I'll let you know.

Update: I was unable to get print HANDLE "statement" or last; to work in the for loop like you where wanting to do, the program kept crashing, and I have been unsuccessful in conferming what I said about handle scope, I've run acouple of searches on this site and couldn't find a messages that directly covered it.

jjdraco
learning Perl one statement at a time.