$sym = gensym;
open($sym, "filename");

[download]

If you see code like that, I think it was for old versions of perl (I belive pre-5.6) where filehandles couldn't be autovivified, so you had to create a glob with gensym or open would complain.

In reply to Re: using lexically scoped variable as a filehandle by ambrus
in thread using lexically scoped variable as a filehandle by varian

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