You don't show us the code where you open the file. Without that I'd guess that you've only opened the file for reading or something like that.

If you're attempting to read or write a filehandle which isn't open in the right mode, then Perl will tell you exactly what the problem is if you ask it to. You should always start your Perl scripts with

#!/your/path/to/perl -w
use strict;
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and then Perl with give you all the help it can.

"Perl makes the fun jobs fun
and the boring jobs bearable" - me

Your question raises plenty of problems.

What exactly do you want to do? As the previous answers showed if you want to write to a file, then later on to read from it, you just need to close it in between. If you want to keep it open here is how you can do it:

#!/bin/perl -w
use strict;

open( NOTES, "+<note.txt")             # +< allows you to do read/writ
+e updates on the file
  or die "cannot open note.txt: $!";

print NOTES "stuff\n";                 # print stuff in your file

my $pos= tell NOTES;                   # mark the position before the 
+write you are interested in
print NOTES "test\n";                  # write your data (it should en
+d up with \n if you want 
                                       # <NOTES> to pick it up properl
+y later)

# when you are ready to read it

seek NOTES, $pos, 0;                   # reset filehandle to the right
+ position
my $fromfile=<NOTES>;                  # read
chomp $fromfile;                       # rememebr that \n? You might w
+ant to remove it now
if ($fromfile eq "test") {print "Yes, this works"}
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Now why would you want to do this over storing the data in an array or something similar, which would be way faster than playing with files? I have no idea (size of the data you actually write?)

• Make sure NOTES is closed and opened for reading 're you reach $fromfile
• You probably forgot to chomp a newline.

.
.
while (<NOTES>){
  print "Found 'test'\n" if (/test/);
}
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Hope this helps,

Jeroen
I was dreaming of guitarnotes that would irritate an executive kind of guy (FZ)

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

open NOTES,">tmp.fil" or die "Aaaargh!\n";
print NOTES "test";
close NOTES;

open NOTES "<tmp.fil"  or die "Aaaaaargh2!\n";
my $Inpt=<NOTES>;
close NOTES;
print "Yup, it's there!\n" if ($Inpt eq "test");
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ChOas

#!perl -w
use strict;

my $filename = "notes.txt";
if (-e $filename) {
  open NOTES, '+< ' . $filename or die "Cant open $filename: $!\n";
}
else {
  open NOTES, '+> ' . $filename or die "Cant open $filename: $!\n";
}
print NOTES "foo\n";
seek NOTES, 0, 0;
$data = <NOTES>;
print $data;
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open NOTES,"+>filename" or die $!;
print NOTES "test";
seek NOTES,0,0;
$fromfile=<NOTES>;
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