The funny star notation copies the contents of the one typeglob into another. Perl uses typeglobs to hold global variables -- such as filehandles. It's more or less the same thing as duping the filehandle as with your open call. (It has the same effect on the filehandle, but it copies the other slots of the typeglob. Don't worry if you don't understand that; it probably has no effect on your program.)

Unless you're printing to the log file from multiple processes or you need the data RIGHT NOW, don't worry about unbuffering it. If you do need to unbuffer it, select the filehandle, then set $|, then select the previously-selected filehandle -- or use a module such as IO::Handle.

> The funny star notation copies the contents of the one
> typeglob into another.

Ah. I hadn't read much about typeglobs. Actually, the first time I saw the word "typeglob" and saw a *, I thought "fileglob". Also, a * outside of a string makes me think "dereference", but it looks like Perl thinks of it much like any other sigil.

> don't worry about unbuffering it.

Oh, ok. I think I see. The output to either filehandle (MY_LOG or STDERR) will stay in the same order just fine. I suppose that, after I've written a few lines to MY_LOG, if I then write to STDERR, the buffer will get flushed at that point anyway.

Another way to do what you want is to localize STDERR in the scope where you want logging. The trick there is to organize your code so that where you want logging coincides with a scope.

{
    open local(*STDERR), '>> /var/log/mylog.log'
        or die 'Gah! ', $!;
#       or die 'Gah! ', $/; # Oops, typo
    # do stuff
}
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Update: Localizing STDERR does two things.

1. It confines the new global STDERR handle to the dynamic scope. The old one is automatically restored when the scope is exited. That is the reason for the enclosing curly brackets, to create a scope.
2. It shares the new temporary STDERR seamlessly. Functions called within the dynamic scope will magically honor logging of STDERR without any need to anticipate it in their definitions.

Why not just

open STDERR, '>> /var/log/mylog.log'
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instead of

open local(*STDERR), '>> /var/log/mylog.log'
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?

Wait a sec... why did you sneak that $/ in (input record separator) at the end of the call to die()?

    # Get filename components
    ($filename, $filedir, $filext) = fileparse($0, '\..*');

    # Create filename; note the ./log sub-dir
    $logfile = "${filedir}log/$filename.log";

    # Redirect STDOUT & STDERR to named logfile
    open( STDOUT, ">>$logfile") or
                        die "\nUnable to open STDOUT -> $logfile: $!\n
+";
    open( STDERR, ">>&STDOUT");

    # Set autoflush on
    select (STDERR); $| = 1;
    select (STDOUT); $| = 1;
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> select (STDERR); $| = 1;

Isn't STDERR already unbuffered by default?

Yes, but it doesn't hurt to make sure! _________________________________________________________________________________
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