Where are lexical Filehandles documented?

[Greg Snow]

I have noticed several references to lexically scoped filehandles in
this group recently, code like:

{
open my $fh, "path/to/file" or die "couldn't open file: $!";
...
}

I want to read up some more on how this works, but have not found
anything in the standard docs about lexical filehandles. I greped all
the docs I have
(tcgrep.pl -p -r -i -l "(?s)lexical.{1,50}file\s*hand" in my perl
directory (activestate v5.6.1)) and that only pointed to perlopentut
and perlfaq5 which both only refer to using a non-lexical scalars as
the handle.

So, where are lexically scoped filehandles documented?

Thanks,

 

[Ben Morrow]

I have noticed several references to lexically scoped filehandles in
this group recently, code like:

{
open my $fh, "path/to/file" or die "couldn't open file: $!";
...
}

I want to read up some more on how this works, but have not found
anything in the standard docs about lexical filehandles.

So, where are lexically scoped filehandles documented?

perlopentut, "Indirect Filehandles".

Ben

 

[Tad McClellan]

I have noticed several references to lexically scoped filehandles in
this group recently, code like:

{
open my $fh, "path/to/file" or die "couldn't open file: $!";
...
}

I want to read up some more on how this works, but have not found
anything in the standard docs about lexical filehandles.

Try the third paragraph of:

perldoc -f open

I greped all
the docs I have
(tcgrep.pl -p -r -i -l "(?s)lexical.{1,50}file\s*hand"

What if "filehandle" comes first and "lexical" comes second?

As in:

If FILEHANDLE is an undefined lexical ("my") variable the
variable is assigned a reference to a new anonymous filehandle

 

[Eric Amick]

I have noticed several references to lexically scoped filehandles in
this group recently, code like:

{
open my $fh, "path/to/file" or die "couldn't open file: $!";
...
}

I want to read up some more on how this works, but have not found
anything in the standard docs about lexical filehandles. I greped all
the docs I have
(tcgrep.pl -p -r -i -l "(?s)lexical.{1,50}file\s*hand" in my perl
directory (activestate v5.6.1)) and that only pointed to perlopentut
and perlfaq5 which both only refer to using a non-lexical scalars as
the handle.

So, where are lexically scoped filehandles documented?

The only place I've seen it in the 5.6.1 docs is in perldelta, and only
obliquely at that; look for "file and directory handles can be
autovivified". As other posters have pointed out, the 5.8.x docs do a
better job of documenting it.

 

[Greg Snow]

Try the third paragraph of:

perldoc -f open

Didn't help on my local computer (this change did not make it into the
v5.6.1 perlfunc doc apparently), but I did find it at
http://www.perldoc.org/. My quick test shows that it does work on my
copy.

Thanks,

What if "filehandle" comes first and "lexical" comes second?

Good point, but still didn't help since I don't have a local copy of
the v5.8 docs.