Using Strings as File Handlers

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

Hello All,

This may seem very basic and simple question but still I am forced to ask.

I have an array containing many strings. I want to use those strings as file handlers. But when I try to use them it throws:

Can't use string ("my-test-string") as a symbol ref while "strict refs"

How can I make it work using both 'use strict' and also being able to use strings as file handlers.

Comment on Using Strings as File Handlers Download Code

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Re: Using Strings as File Handlers by Corion (Patriarch) on Jan 04, 2010 at 09:03 UTC
Do you really want to use strings as file handles? Why? The following works under any Perl since 5.6.0: `open my $fh, '<', $filename or die "Couldn't open '$filename': $!"; push @filehandles, $fh;` [download] If you don't want to use lexical filehandles but keep on using bareword filehandles (which is what "string filehandles" are), then you'll have to switch off `strict`, because that's one thing that it forbids, and for good reason IMO.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Using Strings as File Handlers by Khen1950fx (Canon) on Jan 04, 2010 at 09:18 UTC
There is another way, albeit not as good as Corion's. See: perlfaq5. Try this: `#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; my $string = 'my-test-string'; open(my $fh, '>', \$string) or die "Could not open string for writing"; print $fh "my-test-string\n"; open($fh, '<', \$string) or die "Could not open string for reading"; my $x = <$fh>; print $x, "\n";` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Using Strings as File Handlers by Corion (Patriarch) on Jan 04, 2010 at 09:20 UTC
Oh - that is a different interpretation of the question, but it might well be that I misunderstood the question. This solution will use a string instead of a file on disk and access it as a file handle.	[reply]