Should I use a lexical directory handle with opendir in Perl?

Question

Almost universally when people post questions on SO (or elsewhere) about Perl and reading from files, if any code that involves an old-style open

open FH, ">file.txt" or die "Can't open for write, $!";  # OLD way, do not use!

gets yelled at for not using a lexical filehandle. As we all know,

open my $fh, ">", "file.txt" or die "Can't open for write, $!"; # new hotness

is the proper way to open a file handle in modern Perl. What about directory handles? In a few recent SO questions, people have posed questions that involve opendir, and posted code like

opendir DIR, "/directory" or die "Can't get the directory, wtf?! $!"; # ???

The perldoc pages show

opendir(my $dh, $some_dir) || die "can't opendir $some_dir: $!";

as the example.

Should we be suggesting to folks to use a lexical directory handle for opendir as well?

Answer 1

Definitely. The argument for lexical filehandles for directories is identical to that for files - scoping to the current namespace.

Answer 2

Yes, lexicals are preferred for opendir as well as open.

Answer 3

When I get the chance, I will be fixing all of those examples in the perldocs. Learning Perl already uses the lexical handles in the fifth edition.