http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=11115734

EDIT:
I use used bareword filehandles. In the course of this discussion I was convinced not to do so.

I've seen many Perl programmers advocating the usage of lexical scalars instead. Though there are good reasons for this, it has a drawback. Filehandles in Perl are special on a syntactical level. The compiler is capable of catching errors like this:

open FH, '<', 'myfile'; print FH, "something\n";

by emitting an error:

No comma allowed after filehandle at ...

Whereas strange things happen at runtime if you use:

open my $fh, '<', 'myfile'; print $fh, "something\n";
NB: Someone else pointed to this subtle difference but sadly I don't remember who and where it was. She/he should be credited here.

So I stay with barewords and try to avoid the problems caused by the usage of global variables using this idiom:

open local *FH, '<', 'myfile'; while (<FH>) { # do something } close FH;

Some features:

So, as long as I follow this pattern im my own package, I feel kind of safe. Side effects of localizing a glob are easily circumvented.

The question remains: Do I miss something here? Do you see any pitfalls using this approach?

Here is an example demonstrating the issues I'm aware of.

#!/usr/bin/perl use Test2::V0; package Foobar; our $foobar = "foobar\n"; our @foobar; sub use_fh { # unlocalized use of FH in separate package open FH, '<', \$foobar; @foobar = <FH>; close FH; } package main; my $foo = "foo\n"; my $bar = "bar\n"; my $baz = "baz\n"; my @baz; sub use_localized_fh { # protect caller's FH open local *FH, '<', \$baz; @baz = <FH>; close FH; } sub close_fh { # unlocalized use of FH close FH; } # open now, use later open FH, '<', \$bar; my @foo; # create new scope { # use localized FH, protecting handle opened on \$bar open local *FH, '<', \$foo; # call sub that uses localized FH use_localized_fh; # call sub in other package that uses FH Foobar::use_fh; # FH still intact @foo = <FH>; close FH; } is \@baz, [$baz], 'got $baz in sub'; is \@Foobar::foobar, [$Foobar::foobar], 'got $Foobar::foobar in foreig +n sub'; is \@foo, [$foo], 'good: got $foo'; { open local *FH, '<', \$foo; # call sub that closes FH close_fh; @foo = <FH>; close FH; } is \@foo, [], 'bad: FH was closed in sub'; # FH at this scope is still untouched my @bar = <FH>; close FH; is \@bar, [$bar], 'good: got $bar'; done_testing;

Greetings,
-jo

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