The basics of handling files are simple: you associate a filehandle with an external entity (usually a file) and then use a variety of operators and functions within Perl to read and update the data stored within the data stream associated with the filehandle.A filehandle is a named internal Perl structure that associates a physical file with a name. All filehandles are capable of read/write access, so you can read from and update any file or device associated with a filehandle. However, when you associate a filehandle, you can specify the mode in which the filehandle is opened.