...strict and warnings, i am unable to get out of " Inappropriate ioctl for device "...
Your mistake was checking $! when you weren't supposed to.

Do not use $! to determine if a failure occured.

perlvar says the value of $! is meaningful only immediately after a failure:

    if (open(FH, $filename)) {
    # Here $! is meaningless.
    ...
    } else {
    # ONLY here is $! meaningful.
    ...
    # Already here $! might be meaningless.
    }
    # Since here we might have either success or failure,
    # here $! is meaningless.
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