note moritz <p>Is there a good reason not to use a lexical variable as file handle? <code> open my $FH, '>', 'whatever' or warn 'blah'; # much much later if ($FH) { print $FH "something } </code> <p>works for sure. <!-- Node text goes above. Div tags should contain sig only --> <div class="pmsig"><div class="pmsig-616540"> [http://perl6.org/|Perl 6 - the future is here, just unevenly distributed] </div></div> 985699 985699