8.92 IO::Handle

The base class for all other IO handle classes. Its main purpose is for the other IO classes to inherit from it; programs should not create IO::Handle objects directly. Provides the following methods:

• new
• new_from_fd
• clearerr
• error
• fdopen
• flush
• getline
• getlines
• opened
• ungetc
• untaint
• write

IO::Handle also provides the following methods, which are not described in detail here because they are simply front-ends for the corresponding built-in functions. See Chapter 5, Function Reference , for more information.

Method	Description
close	Closes file or pipe
eof	Returns 1 if next read will return end-of-file
fileno	Returns file descriptor for a filehandle
getc	Returns next character from input file
print	Prints a string or comma-separated list of strings
printf	Prints a formatted string
read	Reads data from a filehandle
stat	Returns an array of status information for a file
sysread	Reads data from a filehandle with system call read(2)
syswrite	Writes data to a filehandle with system call write(2)
truncate	Truncates a file to a specified length

Finally, the following methods act on the equivalent Perl variables. See Chapter 4 for more information.

Method	Description
autoflush	If nonzero, forces a flush now and after each write or print (default 0)
format_page_number	Current page number
format_lines_per_page	Current page length (default 60)
format_lines_left	Number of lines left on page
format_name	Name of current report format
format_top_name	Name of current top-of-page format
format_line_break_characters	Current set of linebreak chars for a format
format_formfeed	Formfeed char used by formats (default \f )
format_write	Wrapper for write function
input_record_separator	Input record separator (default newline)
input_line_number	Current input line number for last filehandle accessed
output_field_separator	Output field separator for print
output_record_separator	Output record separator for print