A Perl temp file example

Many times in Perl applications you need to be able to create a temporary file (a Perl temp file). In this scenario you don't want to get into the system-specific details of temporary directories and things like that; you just want to create and use a temporary file.

Here are some Perl code snippets that should help get you started down this road.

How to create a Perl temp file

The process of creating and using temp files in your Perl programs is made easy with the File::Temp module. The first step in the process is to use this module, and here's how I normally do that:

use File::Temp qw(tempfile);

Next, here's how I get a reference to a new Perl temp file:

# remove the file when the reference goes away with the UNLINK option
$tmp_fh = new File::Temp( UNLINK => 1 );

Or, if you want the temp file to stay around after the reference goes away, set the UNLINK option like this:

$tmp_fh = new File::Temp( UNLINK => 0 );

You can also access the Perl temp filename, like this:

print "temp filename: $tmp_fh\n";

Writing to the temp file

You can write to the temporary file just like you write to any other file with Perl, like this:

print $tmp_fh "Yada yada yada ...\n";

In fact, you can just treat this like any other normal filehandle, knowing that all the system-specific temporary file handling stuff is taken care of for you.