use strict; my %handles = (); sub open_one { my $pid = shift; return $handles{$pid} if exists $handles{$pid}; while( (my @k = keys %handles) > $threshold ) { my $toclose = $k[ int rand @k ]; close $handles{$toclose}; delete $handles{$toclose}; } open $handles{$pid}, ">>", "logfile-$pid.log" or die "hrm: $!"; return $handles{$pid}; } sub scanner { # ... boring things if( m/something/ ) { my $pid = $1; my $fh = &open_one($pid); print $fh $stuff; } # boring things... }