Question

I am getting the below perl error.

Can't use string ("") as a symbol ref while "strict refs" in use at test173 line 30.

Pasted the code below. Line 30 is the open statement. It’s failing
in the open statement. I have use strict; and use warnings; in the
script. What does the error denote? How do I change the code to resolve
this error.

my $file = 'testdata';
open($data, '<', $file) or die "Could not open '$file'\n";
print "file data id:$data\n"; 
@iu_data = <$data>;
$totalLineCnt = @iu_data;
print "total line cnt: $totalLineCnt". "\n";

Answer 1

Be sure that you did not assign a value to $data before. I can reproduce your problem by just three lines:

use strict;
my $data = ''; 
open($data, '<', 'test.txt');

You can resolve the problem for example by creating a new scope:

use strict;
my $data = ''; 
{
  my $data;
  open($data, '<', 'test.txt');
  close($data);
}

Alternatively, you can undefine $data before using it:

use strict;
my $data = '';
undef $data; 
open($data, '<', 'test.txt');
close($data);

Etc, etc…