You can just open with an undefined scalar and use the scalar the same way you would the filehandle. 

open my $foo, '<', 'data.txt' or die "Can't read data.txt: $!";
while ( <$foo> ) {
    chomp;
    #etc.
}
close $foo;

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The resulting scalar can be passed around to other functions and used there.

In reply to Re: Still blurry on variables for filehandles by kyle
in thread Still blurry on variables for filehandles by throop

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