From perldata:

The two control characters ^D and ^Z, and the tokens __END__ and __DATA__ may be used to indicate the logical end of the script before the actual end of file. Any following text is ignored.

Text after __DATA__ but may be read via the filehandle "PACKNAME::DATA", where "PACKNAME" is the package that was current when the __DATA__ token was encountered. The filehandle is left open pointing to the contents after __DATA__. It is the program's responsibility to "close DATA" when it is done reading from it. For compatibility with older scripts written before __DATA__ was introduced, __END__ behaves like __DATA__ in the toplevel script (but not in files loaded with "require" or "do") and leaves the remaining contents of the file accessible via "main::DATA".

See SelfLoader for more description of __DATA__, and an example of its use. Note that you cannot read from the DATA filehandle in a BEGIN block: the BEGIN block is executed as soon as it is seen (during compilation), at which point the corresponding __DATA__ (or __END__) token has not yet been seen.

After Compline,
Zaxo

In reply to Re: care to explain __DATA__? by Zaxo
in thread best way to change xml record using XML::Simple? by waxmop

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