How can I open a file with a leading ">" or trailing blanks?

Normally perl ignores trailing blanks in filenames, and interprets certain leading characters (or a trailing ``|'') to mean something special. To avoid this, you might want to use a routine like this. It makes incomplete pathnames into explicit relative ones, and tacks a trailing null byte on the name to make perl leave it alone: 

    sub safe_filename {
	local $_  = shift;
	return m#^/#
		? "$_\0"
		: "./$_\0";
    }


    $fn = safe_filename("<<<something really wicked   ");
    open(FH, "> $fn") or "couldn't open $fn: $!";

You could also use the sysopen function (see sysopen).