Perl version     • TUX   Perl 5 version 12.0 documentation
Recently read      • tell      Returns the current position in
bytes for FILEHANDLE, or -1 on error. FILEHANDLE may be an
expression whose value gives the name of the actual filehandle.
If FILEHANDLE is omitted, assumes the file last read.      Note
the in bytes: even if the filehandle has been set to operate on
characters (for example by using the :encoding(utf8) open
layer), tell() will return byte offsets, not character offsets
(because that would render seek() and tell() rather slow).
The return value of tell() for the standard streams like the
STDIN depends on the operating system: it may return -1 or
something else. tell() on pipes, fifos, and sockets usually
returns -1.      There is no systell function. Use sysseek(FH,
0, 1) for that.      Do not use tell() (or other buffered I/O
operations) on a filehandle that has been manipulated by
sysread(), syswrite() or sysseek(). Those functions ignore the
buffering, while tell() does not.