That recent discussion involved "pseudo-lexical" file handles using local. I agree that that is a bad idea, but maintain that bareword file handles are reasonable in top-level code. (Modules do not normally contain top-level code.)

While the typo-catching features of use strict are helpful, you should not be using file handle names that are that easily confused in the first place. In particular, FH is suitable for examples of I/O code, but should not be used in real programs as a global. Global file handles should have meaningful names. For example, I recently wrote code that imports a text-format package manifest into a database; the file is read using a handle named MANIFEST.

bareword filehandles clash with package names

I presume that is the origin of the convention of always writing global file handles in all UPPERCASE, since package names are (with few exceptions, like UNIVERSAL) always mixed-case (or lowercase for pragmas) by convention?

In reply to Re^4: Summing numbers in a file by jcb
in thread Summing numbers in a file by pvfki

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