I looked through the documentation for IO::Handle, IO::File, IO::Scalar, etc. while working on this ... and I confess I can't see the connection to my problem.

Both of your code examples refer to opening files. I don't see the connection to reading from STDIN. How, for example, would you rework my code samples with IO::Handle or the localization of STDIN?

Thanks for looking at this problem.

Jim Keenan