Brethern,

I'm trying to bring some old 4.X code up to 5.8. I'm still confused about using strings as filehandles. The tutorial section at File Input and Output says

open(FILE, "data.txt");          #opens data.txt in read-mode
while(<FILE>){                   #reads line by line from FILE which i
+s the filehandle for data.txt
   chomp;
   print "Saw $_ in data.txt\n"; #shows you what we have read
}
close FILE;
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Of course, with just a little 'improvement' this loses:

use strict;

my($foo) = 'FILE';

open($foo, "data.txt");          #opens data.txt in read-mode
while(<$foo>){                   #reads line by line from FILE which i
+s the filehandle for data.txt
   chomp;
   print "Saw $_ in data.txt\n"; #shows you what we have read
}
close $foo;                      #close the file.
[download]

Gives the dreaded:
Can't use string ("FILE") as a symbol ref while "strict refs" in use at IO.pl line 7.

Oddly, looking through the various tutorials, I can't find a good example of creating a filehandle, binding it to a variable, and passing it around (e.g. as an arg to a subroutine.) What's the ''recomended'' way to do this?

thanks,
throop