Network Programming with Perl

Using Object-Oriented Syntax with the IO::Handle and IO::File Modules

We use Perl5's object-oriented facilities extensively later in this book. Although you won't need to know much about creating object-oriented modules, you will need a basic understanding of how to use OO modules and their syntax. This section illustrates the basics of Perl's OO syntax with reference to the IO::Handle and IO::File module, which together form the basis of Perl's object-oriented I/O facilities.

Objects and References

In Perl, references are pointers to data structures. You can create a reference to an existing data structure using the backslash operator. For example:

 $a = 'hi there'; $a_ref = \$a; # reference to a scalar @b = ('this','is','an','array'); $b_ref ...