Since even I don't understand what I just wrote - I'll rephrase ;-)

• The __DATA__ tag has to be in the module if the code reading from <DATA> is in the module.
  
• If you are reading from DATA in the .pl file then the __DATA__ has to be in the .pl file (although in this case you can use __END__ interchangeably with __DATA__).
• You cannot (AFAIK) read from __DATA__ in another file.

Hope this helps.

   larryk                                          
perl -le "s,,reverse killer,e,y,rifle,lycra,,print"

larryk, you can read a __DATA__ that is in another file.

Imagine you have a perl module called Store_Config.pm, which has some information in it's __DATA__ tags that you need to read. If you know the namespace that the __DATA__ handle is in, you can do this to read it:

use strict;
use Store_Config;
use Symbol qw(qualify_to_ref);

#Pull the reference to the __DATA__ handle 
my $fh = qualify_to_ref(DATA => 'Store_Config');

#$fh can now be acted on like a file handle

read($fh, my $config, -s $fh);

print "Store_Config.pm's __DATA__ content is: [$config]\n";
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I have the data in the same file from which I try to read them - but the problem was, I also defined a package ParfileRecord in the same file. So when I read from ParfileRecord::DATA, everything is fine. Thank you for getting me on the right track. pike

Just use <PACKAGENAME::DATA>. Works for me.

conv

Update: Just noticed that pike already applied this. Just ignore me, I'll go take a nap.