As I fumble along the path of Perl, I keep finding that my stride exceed my knowledge. Today it is 'tailing' files whose handles are in a hash.

I have long used the paradym of: 

  open INP, "<xyzzy";
  while (! $fileRotated){
     while(<INP>){
        ... read lines
     }
     sleep 1;
     seek (INP,0,1);  #clear EOF
     #check inodes and length
  }

[download]
That works fine for a single known file. But now the task is to 'tail' files in an arbitrary number of directories, all in the same tailing loop.

For this task, my open() function is in a readdir() loop, and the handles are being put into a hash keyed by the directory name. 

  while (readdir $dirH) {
    next if ($_ eq '.'|| $_ eq '..');
    next if (! m/\@(?:\d{1,3}\.)\d{1,3}/); #ip of src of records
    if ( ! defined $Accts{$_}){    #new directory
      # open the new file and put handle in hash
      #open $Accts{$_}, "<$_/all/events.log"; 
      open $Accts{$_}, "<$Cpath/$dateDir/$_/all/events.log";
    }
  }

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'$Accts{$_}' take place of INP. That seems to be running without visible problems. But when using these file handles in a read statement the results is not as expected. 
  foreach $key (keys %Accts){
    # 
    seek($teamAccts{$key},  0, 1); # reset end-of-file error
    my $safekey=$key;
    $safekey =~ s/ /_/g;  # no embedded spaces in tokens
    while (<$Accts{$key}> ) {  # one of the sub files
      my $L=$_;    # $_ by itself gave same result
      my $msgL="$DTG $safekey $L";  # $L should have \n already
      $rsltStr .= $msgL;
    }
  }

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I expected to see lines of text ( timestamp dirName textline). The while(<FH>) should be returning lines of the files. Instead I see: 
       1400765377 msgfrom@10.0.1.2 GLOB(0x1f11bf8)

[download]
WTFO? "GLOB(...)"

-----Update-2-----

Found the problem! It now works!!

It was in the path value passed to the open. I did not fully construct the superior path (prefix) to the value returned from the readdir.

As a result I attempted to open an incomplete path and failed.

-----Update-1-----

I have tried the readline() approach on a file that has data present: 

  foreach $key (keys %teamAccts){
    # 
    plog "Key=$key";
    seek($teamAccts{$key},  0, 1); # reset end-of-file error
    my $safekey=$key;
    $safekey =~ s/ /_/g;  # no embedded spaces in tokens
    #while (<$teamAccts{$key}> ) {  # one of the sub files
    while ( readline($teamAccts{$key}) ){
      my $L=$_;
      plog "readline=<$L>";
      my $msgL="$DTG $safekey $L";  # $line should have \n already
      $eventStr .= $msgL;
      #addEvent ($key, $L);
    }
  }

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Nothing in the while loop executes. 'plog' is a logging subroutine.

I suspected that the 'seek' might not be working to clear the EOF, so I used a file that has 10 lines of text. None were processed.

I Dumped the hash after opening the file with this result: 

--scanning
MSpt scanCS: opening  <Chris - Kali 1@10.0.1.2>
$VAR1 = 'Chris - Kali 1@10.0.1.2';
$VAR2 = \*{'::$teamAccts{...}'};
--finding
+++finding
MSpt Key=Chris - Kali 1@10.0.1.2
--scanning

[download]
$VAR2 is a reference, to a typeglob, of my hash entry??
Is this of any help?

It is always better to have seen your target for yourself, rather than depend upon someone else's description.

In reply to FileHandles in a Hash by Wiggins

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