How does filehandles (lexical) affect performance or memory usage?

In Perl, filehandles, especially lexical filehandles, can affect performance and memory usage in several ways. Lexical filehandles are created using the built-in `open` function and are scoped to the block in which they are created. This scoping can lead to cleaner and more maintainable code compared to using global filehandles. However, the impact on performance and memory usage may vary based on the context in which they are used.

One of the primary benefits of using lexical filehandles is that they make resource management easier and help prevent resource leaks. Since they are automatically closed when they go out of scope, this can lead to reduced memory usage, especially if a program opens many files dynamically during runtime.

However, excessive creation and destruction of lexical filehandles can introduce overhead. Each time a lexical filehandle is created, Perl may need to allocate memory and initialize internal structures, which could negatively impact performance if done repeatedly in tight loops or frequent operations.

In general, using lexical filehandles is a best practice for cleaner code and better resource management, but developers should be mindful of performance impacts if used excessively in performance-critical sections of their applications.