Re: When do filehandles close?

[tachyon]

A filehandle will bet closed when:

1. It is formally closed with close
2. When it goes out of scope which occurs:
   1. If it is localised to a block and you exit said block, provided no closure of course
   2. When the program exits everything goes out of scope.

Examples, no or die $! for clarity not form.

open F, $file;
close F;
# F is closed

{
    open my $fh, $file;
}
# $fh is closed

open F, $file;
exit 0;
# program is gone and F is closed

# closure
{
    my $fh;
    sub append {
        unless ( $fh ) { open $fh, $file }
    }
}
# closure means $fh is not destroyed, $fh remains open until program e
+xit

[pg]

Missed one little thing;-) as the OP already pointed out, reopen implicitly close a file handler.

However in this case $. (current line number for the last filehandle accessed) is not reset. I would prefer explicit close all the time simply because of this.

Update

Just add a piece of code for demon (name this script a.pl):

use strict;
use warnings;

open(SCRIPT, "<", "a.pl");
<SCRIPT>;
<SCRIPT>;
print $., "\n";
#close(SCRIPT);
open(SCRIPT, "<", "a.pl");
<SCRIPT>;
print $., "\n";

Try to comment or uncomment that close. If it is commented, print out:

2
3

If it is not commented:

2
1