Writing and Appending to Files

Writing and Appending to Files

• You can do more than just read a file of course. You can also open a filehandle for writing with the greater than sign (>) using the syntax:

  open ([FILE_HANDLE_NAME], ">[filename]"); 
  

• or for appending using the double-greater-than symbol (>>) with the syntax:

  open ([FILE_HANDLE_NAME], ">>[filename]"); 
  

• The difference between appending and writing is that when you write to a file, you erase whatever was previously there whereas when you append to a file, you simply add the new information to the end of whatever text was already there.

• Typically, when writing to a file, you use the print function. However, instead of printing to standard output, you would specify the filename to print to. Consider the following example:

  open (TEMP_FILE, ">temp.file") || 
        &CgiDie ("Cannot open temp.file");
  print TEMP_FILE "hello there\n";
  close (TEMP_FILE);
  

• The file "temp.file" will now have the solitary line:

  hello there 
  

Additional Resources:

• Perl
• Perl Resources
• Instant Web Scripts With CGI

Reading a File Line by Line
Table of Contents
Deleting, Renaming and Changing the Permissions of Files