Can I find a filename from a filehandle in Perl?

Question

open(my $fh, '>', $path) || die $!;
my_sub($fh);

Can my_sub() somehow extrapolate $path from $fh?

Answer 1

A filehandle might not even be connected to a file but instead to a network socket or a pipe hooked to the standard output of a child process.

If you want to associate handles with paths your code opens, use a hash and the fileno operator, e.g.,

my %fileno2path;

sub myopen {
  my($path) = @_;

  open my $fh, "<", $path or die "$0: open: $!";

  $fileno2path{fileno $fh} = $path;
  $fh;
}

sub myclose {
  my($fh) = @_;
  delete $fileno2path{fileno $fh};
  close $fh or warn "$0: close: $!";
}

sub path {
  my($fh) = @_;
  $fileno2path{fileno $fh};
}

Answer 2

You can call stat or IO::Handle::stat on a filehandle -- that will give you the device and inode of the file that you have opened. With that and a little operating system wizardry you can find the filename. OK, maybe a lot of operating system wizardry.

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The find command has an -inum option to find a file with a specified inode number. This is probably not going to be as efficient as caching the path when you open the file, as gbacon recommends.