11.9. HANDLING FILES

11.9.1. Filehandle

Filehandle is the name of a Perl program that provides input/output connection between a Perl process and the outside world. In other words a filehandle is just the name or label of a connection; it is not exactly the name of a file.

The names of filehandles are constructed using alphanumerics plus underscores. However, these names should not begin with a digit. Although filehandle names or labels could be written using either upper-case or lowercase letters, they are normally written using uppercase letters as a sort of convention.