It's similar, but there are some differences (which may or may not be important):

  1. the local $/ has a very tight scope which may be important if you read additional files and don't want to get them in slurp mode.
  2. no global filehandles.
  3. a minimum of error handling
  4. filenames hardcoded only once

well, you can also get point 1 with an ordinary block, e.g. 

my ($content, $IN);
unless (open ($IN, "<", $file)) {
  die "Error in reading '$file': $!\n";
} # unless
else {
  local $/ = undef; # valid only until end of block
  binmode($IN);
  $content = <$IN>;
  close ($IN);
} # else

[download]
or the like.

Global filehandles have a problem: they are global, and if you open(IN, ...) and another IN is already opened, the first IN is closed. In some cases (e.g. recursions, reading filenames out of a file and opening them in a subroutine) this may be fatal.

point 4 is in my eyes important that it is not good to write something like: 

unless (open ($IN, "<", "file1.txt")) {
  die "Error in reading 'file1.txt': $!\n";
} # unless

[download]
because if the filename changes to something different, there is the danger you forget to change the filename in the die-message (or just do a stupid typo) and you or somebody else searches for the wrong problem

Best regards,
perl -e "s>>*F>e=>y)\*martinF)stronat)=>print,print v8.8.8.32.11.32"

In reply to Re^5: create image via binmode by strat
in thread create image via binmode by Anonymous Monk

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