Your code runs, but you have no idea that the open failed and you blithely continue on until you get the error about trying to print to an unopened handle.

Next the translation: "Yes, I mispelled it here. but it is all caps (and still wrong) in my script." Again, ORD is not ord. CASE MATTERS.

And that code there is different than your initial example (but yes, that's correct and should put something meaningful in $1).