READ isn't a reserved word in Perl, but read is. But it's fine to use filehandles with the same name as (some) all-caps words with a special meaning, as shown below: 
#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

open BEGIN, "/etc/passwd" or die;
print while <BEGIN>;
__END__

[download]

The program compiles and runs without problems.

Abigail

In reply to Re: What the @#%* lost again! by Abigail-II
in thread problem opening and reading from a file by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
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