I think lexical handles were available since perl 5.6, anyway, use local, as in 
{
    local HANDLE;
    opendir HANDLE, $dir or die "Couldn't open $dir : $!\n";
    ...
}
# left scope, HANDLE is what it was before

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In reply to Re: Lexical scoping for filehandles, pre perl 5.8 by Anonymous Monk
in thread Lexical scoping for filehandles, pre perl 5.8 by phl.jns

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