Hi jesuashok where do you get "equivalent built in functions" between those two lists?

• chdir
- Changes the working directory to EXPR - you can't do this with system("cd $dir"); or $ENV{PWD} = $dir; - chdir looks like a good option :o)
• opendir
- Opens a directory named EXPR for processing by readdir, telldir, seekdir, rewinddir, and closedir. - what else could you use to do that?
• readdir
- Returns the next directory entry for a directory opened by opendir. I guess you could fudge that up by using ls, but using readdir from within Perl is more simple and efficient.
• closedir
- Closes a directory opened by opendir - how could you do that?
• symlink
- sure, you could do system ("ln -s $orig $link"); but why complicate things, and why ask someone else to do something you can easily do yourself and then know the result straight away?

• open
- there are many ways to read data out of file, using open within perl is certainly a good one. Using backticks and cat or something like that would not be likely to win you any "well done" prizes.
• read
- Attempts to read LENGTH characters of data into variable SCALAR from the specified FILEHANDLE.
• close
- Closes the file or pipe associated with the file handle - again, what are you proposing to do this with?