#NAME

Perl::Critic::Policy::InputOutput::ProhibitBarewordDirHandles - Write opendir my $dh, $dirname; instead of opendir DH, $dirname;.

#AFFILIATION

This Policy is part of the core Perl::Critic distribution.

#DESCRIPTION

Using bareword symbols to refer to directory handles is particularly evil because they are global, and you have no idea if that symbol already points to some other file or directory handle. You can mitigate some of that risk by localizing the symbol first, but that's pretty ugly. Since Perl 5.6, you can use an undefined scalar variable as a lexical reference to an anonymous file handle or directory handle. Alternatively, see the IO::Handle or IO::Dir modules for an object-oriented approach.

opendir DH, $some_dir;            #not ok
opendir *DH, $some_dir;           #not ok
opendir \*DH, $some_dir;          #not ok
opendir local *DH, $some_dir;     #not ok
opendir $dh, $some_dir;           #ok
opendir my $dh, $some_dir;        #ok
opendir our $dh, $some_dir;       #ok
opendir local $dh, $some_dir;     #ok
my $dh = IO::Dir->new($some_dir); #ok

And Perl7 will probably drop support for bareword filehandles.

#CONFIGURATION

This Policy is not configurable except for the standard options.

IO::Handle

IO::Dir

#AUTHOR

Jeffrey Ryan Thalhammer <jeff@imaginative-software.com>, github.com/pali, github.com/raforg

#COPYRIGHT

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.