[Israel.pm] Garbage Collection Question

[Yuval Yaari]

Hi,

Let's say I have a small script:
## PSEUDO-CODE ##

open(FILE, "<bigfile") or die($!);
# Slurp the entire file into a scalar.
my $file = do { local $/; <FILE> };
close(FILE);

## END CODE ##

And then the code continues to run forever (or at least, let's assume it
will).
Will Perl automagically get rid of $file after the last line I used it in
(in case reference count == 0, of course), or would it be better to set it
to undef?

AFAIK Perl should get rid of it, leaving my RAM alone.
Any cases, except for ref count > 0, when it won't?

Don't you just love this language??? :)


  --Yuval