Writing to a file handle not attached to a file?

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I'm dealing with an API that takes a file hanlde to write output to as an argument. The problem is, I need the output right after, and I'd rather not go through the trouble of creating a file just to have to read from it and then delete it afterwards. Is there anyway to redirect a file handle to a scalar, so that when it's written to (e.g., "print $handle $ouptut"), the output ends up in a scalar?

Comment on Writing to a file handle not attached to a file?

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Re: Writing to a file handle not attached to a file? by gellyfish (Monsignor) on Oct 26, 2006 at 08:22 UTC
With a recent (i.e. 5.8.0 onward) perl you can simply open a filehandle to a reference to a scalar rather than a filename. E.g. : `my $foo = ""; + open BAR, '>', \$foo; + print BAR "Test test"; close BAR; + print $foo;` [download] In older perls you might want to see IO::Scalar for instance. /J\	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Writing to a file handle not attached to a file? by GrandFather (Saint) on Oct 26, 2006 at 08:28 UTC
Something like this: `use strict; use warnings; my $buffer; open my $OUT, '>', \$buffer; print $OUT 'Some text'; close $OUT; print $buffer;` [download] Prints: `Some text` [download] DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Writing to a file handle not attached to a file? by jdporter (Paladin) on Oct 26, 2006 at 14:31 UTC
For completeness, you should also know about IO::String, and IO::Stringy (from which you would use IO::Scalar). We're building the house of the future together.	[reply]