Lexical scoping for filehandles, pre perl 5.8

phl.jns has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi, I am using the following in a script to use a variable as a filehandle:

opendir (my $sub_dir, $dir) or die "Couldn't open $dir : $!\n";
        while (defined (my $file = readdir($sub_dir)) )
[download]

I am trying to run the script on an older box that has perl version 5.005_03 on it - the method I have used will not work pre v5.8. What other methods can I use to scope filehandles ? The subroutine that uses this line in my script will be called recursively and I don't want to trample my open filehandles. Thanks, Phil

Comment on Lexical scoping for filehandles, pre perl 5.8 Download Code

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Re: Lexical scoping for filehandles, pre perl 5.8 by jwkrahn (Abbot) on Oct 23, 2008 at 11:00 UTC
How can I make a filehandle local to a subroutine?	[reply]
Re: Lexical scoping for filehandles, pre perl 5.8 by Anonymous Monk on Oct 23, 2008 at 11:01 UTC
I think lexical handles were available since perl 5.6, anyway, use local, as in `{ local HANDLE; opendir HANDLE, $dir or die "Couldn't open $dir : $!\n"; ... } # left scope, HANDLE is what it was before` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Lexical scoping for filehandles, pre perl 5.8 by phl.jns (Novice) on Oct 23, 2008 at 11:16 UTC
That just produces the following error:- `Can't modify constant item in local at ...` That happpens on v5 and v5.8	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: Lexical scoping for filehandles, pre perl 5.8 by phl.jns (Novice) on Oct 23, 2008 at 11:20 UTC
fixed now! Had put an asterisk in front of the filehandle name:- `local *HANDLE` [download] Thanks, Phil	[reply] [d/l]