Brethern

I have existing code, much of it going back to Perl 4.?. I now need to run both on systems running 5.004_04 and 5.8. Existing code (which didn't use strict) used a string for a file handle. 

sub printSumpn{
  local($handle, file) = ('RPT', '/tmp/report.txt');
  myOpen($handle, $file);
  print $handle "hello world\n";
  close($handle)}

sub myOpen{
  local($handle, $file) =@_;
  # ...do some logging and sanity checking...
  open($handle, ">$file")}

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Coming up to 5.8, this gave various scoldings when I use strict;. Changing 'local' to 'my' and 'RPT' to *RPT seemed to fix the problem.

But under 5.004_04, setting 

 my $handle = *RPT;

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leaves $handle undef, so it loses when it does the open (or the print).

I want to set $handle equal to a filehandle, and be able to pass $handle to a file-opening subroutine, to print, and to close. I want to do this in a way that doesn't violate strict. And in a way that works under both 5.004_04 and 5.8.

Can I do that?

thanks
throop

In reply to Opening files in 5.004 and 5.8 by throop

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