$! is not guaranteed to be cleared if there was no error. This means you probably don't have a "Bad file descriptor" error, it's just the last value of $! (or 'errno'). See perlvar: http://perldoc.perl.org/perlvar.html#Variables-related-to-filehandles
For example, let's try $! when I haven't run a thing before (using Devel::REPL): [anneli@asu ~]$ LANG=C re.pl $ $! No such file or directory $ At some point in the past this error *may* have occurred, but certainly nothing now. This means your <HD> did probably work; only try using $! if you actually get an error condition (e.g. if <HD> is undef). Note that bare filehandles (HD) and two-argument open are discouraged (deprecated?), though it doesn't matter so much for a one liner. - Anneli 2011/11/5 Ken Peng <kenp...@freenet.de> > Hi, > > $ perl -le 'open HD,"/etc/passwd" or die $!; <HD>; print $!' > Bad file descriptor > > what does this error mean? why it happens? > > Thanks. > > -- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: beginners-unsubscr...@perl.org > For additional commands, e-mail: beginners-h...@perl.org > http://learn.perl.org/ > > >
