The only limit on the number of open files is whatever underlying limits your OS imposes. I'm not familar with OSX, but with some OSes it's just a case of messing with ulimit; others require setting a kernel paramter in say /etc/system; others require recompiling the kernel.

For an array of filehandles, the following demonstrates this; it prints the first line from each of 3 common system files: 

my @fhs;
for my $file (qw(/etc/hosts /etc/rpc /etc/services)) {
    my $fh;
    open $fh, $file or die "open $file: $!\n";
    push @fhs, $fh;
}
print scalar <$_> for @fhs;

[download]
I believe there is a Perl module that maintains a cache of open filehandles, but I can't for the life of me remember what it's called. No doubt someone else will.

In reply to Re: Perl limits on number of open files? by dave_the_m
in thread Perl limits on number of open files? by moof1138

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