http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=302088

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

In Perl 5.8 perldoc -f open tells me:

# [...] File handles can be opened to "in memory" files held in Perl scalars via: open($fh, ">", \$variable)

Is there a way to open files in memory in Perl 5.6.1. ?

A lot of our test code does kludgy stuff like write test files to /tmp

On related note is there a good module or technique for Perl 5.8 that allows a RAM based dir ?

I have a script that tars a bunch of files. It would be nice to put them in a directory before tarring them and the end user doesn't want to create temporary files. I've taken a quick look through CPAN but nothing jumped out at me. Please feel free to point out something I've overlooked

update: By "RAM based file system" I mean soemthing like: "not on physical disc", something that nothing but root with a debugger and my program can access.