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This is an excerpt from the latest version perlfaq5.pod, which
comes with the standard Perl distribution. These postings aim to
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5.12: How can I open a filehandle to a string?

(contributed by Peter J. Holzer, hjp-usenet2(a)hjp.at)

Since Perl 5.8.0 a file handle referring to a string can be created by
calling open with a reference to that string instead of the filename.
This file handle can then be used to read from or write to the string:

open(my $fh, '>', \$string) or die "Could not open string for writing";
print $fh "foo\n";
print $fh "bar\n"; # $string now contains "foo\nbar\n"

open(my $fh, '<', \$string) or die "Could not open string for reading";
my $x = <$fh>; # $x now contains "foo\n"

With older versions of Perl, the "IO::String" module provides similar
functionality.



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