Re^2: __DATA___ File Handle

[si_lence]

in reply to Re: __DATA___ File Handle
in thread __DATA___ File Handle

You do not need to open it, but - according to the documentation - you should close it yourself:

"The filehandle is left open pointing to the contents after __DATA__. It is the program's responsibility to close DATA when it is done reading from it." (Special Literals, as linked by Anonymous Monk).

cheers, si_lence

[ikegami]

Which is to say that you can close the file handle to release the resources it uses, but Perl will do so automatically when the program exits if it's still open.