note TheDamian <blockquote><i> Hi all, I'm to use indirect filehandles, per Damian Conway's PBP, like so: <code> my $FH = "DATA"; open $FH, "<", $filename or croak "Cannot open file $filename $!\n"; </code> </i></blockquote> Well, that's not quite how I said to do it in PBP. You missed one important caveat. From the book: <blockquote> Whenever you call <code>open</code> with an undefined scalar variable as its first argument, <code>open</code> creates an anonymous filehandle (i.e. one that isn’t stored in any symbol table), opens it, and puts a reference to it in the scalar variable you passed. <p> So you can open a file and store the resulting filehandle in a lexical variable, all in one statement, like so: <code> open my $FILE, '<', $filename or croak "Can't open '$filename': $OS_ERROR"; </code> <p> The <code>my $FILE</code> embedded in the <code>open</code> statement first declares a new lexical variable in the current scope. That variable is created in an undefined state, so the <code>open</code> fills it with a reference to the filehandle it’s just created, as described above. </blockquote> The key point being: <blockquote> Whenever you call <code>open</code> with an <b>undefined</b> scalar variable as its first argument... </blockquote> So you were nearly right. You just needed a little bit <i>less</i> code: <code> my $FH; open $FH, "<", $filename or croak "Cannot open file $filename $!\n"; </code> Damian 536441 536441