open is a prerequisite to reading any file by name. You cannot do it otherwise.

You can pipe the content of a file into your program. That input will then be available in the STDIN filehandle.

Why wouldn't you want to open the files you want to print?

Yourquestion might be the result of an XY Problem, so please step back and explain what you want to achieve.

I hand you a flash drive. Tell me what information is stored on it without inserting it into any usb host. Also physically opening the drive is not allowed.

This is not meant to be mean nor to insult. I am simply trying to give a more physical analogy to help you see what you are asking and how it sounds.

You have to "open" a file to read the contents.

open FILE, "filename" or die "could not open filename";
while(<FILE>) {
    print $_;
}
close FILE;
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Based on that analogy, couldn't you have your script open and read /dev/hda1, parse the filesystem, find the file and read its data?

That's why I put the word open in quotes.

In your example I would say that "opening" /dev/hda1 means that you are "opening" a set of which the file is a subset. "Opening" a set implies that you have "opened" all subsets. (note the continued use of quotation marks)

Because I know that someone will point out that opening a set does not imply opening all subsets (example: a box filled with other boxes) I will clarify that in this case I am refering to sets that contain only singletons (in this case bytes or blocks) as elements.

Update: fixed moderate typo.

Related nodes are "touching" a file and TIMTOWTDI Challenge: Open a file.

A good point was brought up in the CB... perhaps this question is being asked because the OP tried to open a file and it failed.

If that is the case, use

open my $fh, '<', $name or die "The open failed because of '$!'\n";
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... then fix the problem that is reported.

I am attempting to fulfill an assignment that involves searching the file using regular expressions. "write a script called xxx.pl. This script should read the contents of /httpd/conf/httpd.conf without opening it and print out every line that contains /cgi-bin." So How does one "read a file without opening it?"

It took you 4 years to return to this thread? Wow!

Could it be that your assignment is rather HTTP than regex related?

but even then .... a very stupid question.

update

maybe someone thought that using shell redirections do not open: $content=`<filename` ?

update

or $content=`cat filename` ?

but even then .... a very stupid question!

Cheers Rolf

PS: Je suis Charlie!