in reply to Re^6: Determining what line a filehandle is on
in thread Determining what line a filehandle is on

On a related note, isn't 
$a= undef;
open ($a, "<file.txt");

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a fairly new thing? That is, we used to have to use tricks to create a reference to an anonymous filehandle first, and then open it. Now filehandles are autovivafing. I think that may be one reason why getting away from plain HANDLE's is historicaly a pain, but isn't as bad anymore.

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Re^8: Determining what line a filehandle is on
by tadman (Prior) on Jul 08, 2001 at 22:29 UTC
    I believe this was introduced in Perl 5, so your definition of "new" is obviously a matter of perspective.

    In fact, one of the things that I'm wondering is if you are supposed to be using "old-fashioned" file handles at all. They are more difficult to localize and pass as parameters. Using a "GLOB-ref", as these file handles are, is much more convenient, given even the one-character "penalty" for the $.

    Update:
    The "traditional" way is along the lines of: 
    local (*FOO);
open (FOO, $foo_file) || die "Could not open $foo_file\n";
DoStuffOnHandle(\*FOO);
close (FOO);

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    Versus the new "lexical" way: 
    my $foo;
open ($foo, $foo_file) || die "Could not open $foo_file\n";
DoStuffOnHandle($foo);
close ($foo);

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      Actually this was introduced in 5.6.0, so new really isn't that relative. In 5.005_03 and earlier you have to jump an extra hoop: 
      my $foo = do {local *FH};
# etc as above

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      or if you prefer a different look, you can use Symbol and then do it with: 
      my $foo = gensym();
# And so on

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      But with 5.6 it autovivifies for you, and that is rather nice.
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[d/l]
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      Well, that convinces me. Since there is no real issue, I'll use lexical variables going forward.
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