To illustrate the "open to a scalar ref" method..... According to perldoc -fopen, "File handles can be opened to 'in memory' files held in Perl scalars..."

open( $fh, '>', \$variable ) or ....
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I've tinkered with this construct both with the '>' and '>>' style of open. You have to be sure to close the filehandle before you access the variable directly again, or you get into race-condition problems.

I realize that you said you can't use Perl version 5.8.0. And AFAIK this is a new 5.8.0 feature. But I mention it hopefully for the benefit of someone.