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How can I make a filehandle local to a subroutine?

Jasmine
Administrator

Jan 26, 2001, 10:07 AM

Post #1 of 1 (1991 views)

How can I make a filehandle local to a subroutine?	Can't Post

(From the Perl FAQ)

How can I make a filehandle local to a subroutine? How do I pass filehandles between subroutines? How do I make an array of filehandles?

The fastest, simplest, and most direct way is to localize the typeglob of the filehandle in question:

Code

    local *TmpHandle;

Typeglobs are fast (especially compared with the alternatives) and reasonably easy to use, but they also have one subtle drawback. If you had, for example, a function named TmpHandle(), or a variable named %TmpHandle, you just hid it from yourself.

Code

    sub findme { 
        local *HostFile; 
        open(HostFile, "</etc/hosts") or die "no /etc/hosts: $!"; 
        local $_;               # <- VERY IMPORTANT 
        while (<HostFile>) { 
            print if /\b127\.(0\.0\.)?1\b/; 
        } 
        # *HostFile automatically closes/disappears here 
    }

Here's how to use this in a loop to open and store a bunch of filehandles. We'll use as values of the hash an ordered pair to make it easy to sort the hash in insertion order.

Code

    @names = qw(motd termcap passwd hosts); 
    my $i = 0; 
    foreach $filename (@names) { 
        local *FH; 
        open(FH, "/etc/$filename") || die "$filename: $!"; 
        $file{$filename} = [ $i++, *FH ]; 
    } 
  
    # Using the filehandles in the array 
    foreach $name (sort { $file{$a}[0] <=> $file{$b}[0] } keys %file) { 
        my $fh = $file{$name}[1]; 
        my $line = <$fh>; 
        print "$name $. $line"; 
    }

For passing filehandles to functions, the easiest way is to prefer them with a star, as in func(*STDIN). See Passing Filehandles for details.

If you want to create many, anonymous handles, you should check out the Symbol, FileHandle, or IO::Handle (etc.) modules. Here's the equivalent code with Symbol::gensym, which is reasonably light-weight:

Code

    foreach $filename (@names) { 
        use Symbol; 
        my $fh = gensym(); 
        open($fh, "/etc/$filename") || die "open /etc/$filename: $!"; 
        $file{$filename} = [ $i++, $fh ]; 
    }

Or here using the semi-object-oriented FileHandle, which certainly isn't light-weight:

Code

    use FileHandle; 
  
    foreach $filename (@names) { 
        my $fh = FileHandle->new("/etc/$filename") or die "$filename: $!"; 
        $file{$filename} = [ $i++, $fh ]; 
    }

Please understand that whether the filehandle happens to be a (probably localized) typeglob or an anonymous handle from one of the modules, in no way affects the bizarre rules for managing indirect handles. See the next question.

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