What is the effect of the invocation of Symbol::gensym? This code seems to work just fine without it both with aliasing and with an automatic reference via a prototype (also minimally tested):
t_extra_open.pl: 

use warnings;
use strict;

use Extra;

{
    my $filename = 'extra-open.txt';

    Extra::open my $fh, '>', $filename
        or die "opening '$filename' for write: $!";
    defined $fh or die "write filehandle not defined";
    print $fh "Extra open works just fine \n";
    print $fh "at ", scalar(localtime), "\n";
    close $fh or die "closing '$filename' after write";

    undef $fh;
    Extra::open $fh, '<', $filename
        or die "opening '$filename' for read: $!";
    defined $fh or die "read filehandle not defined";
    print '<<', <$fh>, '>>';
    close $fh or die "closing '$filename' after read";

}

[download]
Extra.pm: 
package Extra;

sub open {  # works

    my (undef, $direction, $filename) = @_;

    return open $_[0], $direction, $filename;

    }

# sub open (\$@) {  # works
#
#     my ($sr_fh, $direction, $filename) = @_;
#
#     return open $$sr_fh, $direction, $filename;
#
#     }

1;

[download]
(Tested under ActiveState 5.8.9 and Strawberry 5.14.4.1.)

Give a man a fish:  <%-{-{-{-<

In reply to Re^3: Looking for suitable spells to get open to return a filehandle from a module by AnomalousMonk
in thread SOLVED: Looking for suitable spells to get open to return a filehandle from a module by talexb

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