how do I "initialize" $

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

This is among the basics. I thought I am trying to read in the first line of a file, and then print it.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

open (FILEHANDLE, '<', 'some.file') or die "Can't open some.file for r
+eading.\n";
<FILEHANDLE>;
print;

close FILEHANDLE;
[download]

That produces:

Use of uninitialized value $_ in print at ./file.pl line 6, <FILEHANDL
+E> line 1.
[download]

What am I not understanding?

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