Now that you have your answer, I wonder if you'd care to suggest how we could improve the documentation for open to make it more obvious how to solve your problem. Currently the docs say this:

You can put a '+' in front of the '>' or '<' to indicate that you want both read and write access to the file; thus '+<' is almost always preferred for read/write updates--the '+>' mode would clobber the file first.
--
<http://dave.org.uk>

"The first rule of Perl club is you do not talk about Perl club."
-- Chip Salzenberg

In reply to Re: open file for read/write by davorg
in thread open file for read/write by Anonymous Monk

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