Oh yes, really fun! the code above will truncate your file; perlopentut says:

Mixing Reads and Writes
It is possible to specify both read and write access. All you do is add a "+" symbol in front of the redirection. But as in the shell, using a less-than on a file never creates a new file; it only opens an existing one. On the other hand, using a greater-than always clobbers (truncates to zero length) an existing file, or creates a brand-new one if there isn't an old one. Adding a "+" for read-write doesn't affect whether it only works on existing files or always clobbers existing ones.

If you don't like spammers, like me, don't answer to their questions, ok?

Valerio