That actually tells perl to exec the thing in $INFILE and read from it as if it were a pipe. like if I were to do: 
$INFILE="/usr/bin/cat /var/adm/messages";
open($FH,"$INFILE|")

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In reply to Re^2: open ($FH,"<named pipe") blocking by gnu@perl
in thread open ($FH,"<named pipe") blocking by gnu@perl

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