Perl 6 Deep Dive

Opening a file

To open a file, use the open function (it is supplied by the IO role but can be used as a simple built-in function). It takes the path to the file and a number of optional parameters. The return value is a file handle, as shown:

my $fh = open '/etc/passwd';

By default, the file is opened in the read-only mode. It is possible to pass the mode name explicitly using the named arguments. The above example is equivalent to the following code:

my $fh = open '/etc/passwd', :r;

The following table lists the possible modes for opening a file:

Parameter	Description
:r	Read-only mode. This is the default mode.
:w	Write-only mode. Creates a file if it does not exist and overwrites it otherwise.
:rw	Read-write mode. Creates a file ...