Greetings, Brothers!

I have a long time issue, off and on, of receiving this error. Inevitably, it's when I'm opening a lexical file handle like this:

open my $file, $filename;

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And I mean that literally, as in I use a scalar that contains the filename. Sometimes--but not usually--I get an error like: 
Parentheses missing around "my" list at ./protcpdump.pl line 40.

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I can "fix" this by merely putting the filename scalar in quotes: 
open my $file, "$filename";

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I know I'm missing something, but for the life of me I can't find the common denominator in the situations where this happens. What am I missing?

Any input would be greatly appreciated! (I hate not really understanding errors like this).

In reply to Parentheses missing around "my" list by rastoboy

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