How could I use File::Find and still keep the feature of the pipe into a filehandle, namely the while loop only reading in one line at a time? As with using backticks, the only way I can see is to read the entire output of File::Find into an array, which could be very large.

Do you know File::Find? If not, did you read the documentation?

My guess is that your answers are NO and NO, and the second one makes me sad.

File::Find has no output. File::Find uses a callback function (commonly called wanted) that is invoked exactly once for every file found. The loop that traverses the directory tree, the equivalent of the pipe open and the while / readline loop, is inside the File::Find::find funcion, so you don't need the while loop any more. The equivalent of the loop body is the callback function, this is where you process any file found by File::Find. You do not need an array.

Consult the really good documentation of File::Find for details.

Alexander