Hi, M. Lewis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> asked: > Charles K. Clarkson recently replied to Sreedhar Reddy in > which one of the corrections he made was: > > open my $fh, '<', $input_file or die qq(Cannot open > "$input_file": $!); [...] > When I have opened a file, I have always done: > > open (FILE, $file) || die "Cannot open $file :$!"; > > A couple of things different. > - I use a FILEHANDLE, where Charles used a variable.
Passing a filehandle to a subroutine is possible, but if you use IO::Handle objects like Charles, it's much easier. > - Charles explicitly said the file was being opened for > reading. My understanding is that is the default. I assume > that Charles did this for clarity. Security, too. In Charles' case, all the open ever does is try to open a file. In your case, it could be used to do almost anything. That's fine as long as your code runs on your box only, probably with a fixed "my $file = ..." right above it - but just imagine your code if part of a CGI program and $file is a CGI parameter, and somebody set it to '/bin/rm -rf /|'. > - Charles opted to use qq() which cause him to have to > enclose the $input_file in "". Dead wrong. He used qq() so that he did not have to quote the "" inside a string which he wanted to be interpolated. Delimiting arguments in an error message by quotes is a very good idea because it lets you see leading or trailing whitespace which you'd otherwise miss. > My question is, which way is better, and why is it better? My > assumption is Charles' method is better, but I would > appreciate knowing why. HTH, Thomas -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://learn.perl.org/> <http://learn.perl.org/first-response>
