Perl Programming/Keywords/-w

The -w keyword
-w is a file test that tests whether the file is writable by effective uid/gid or not.

It takes one argument, either a FILENAME, a FILEHANDLE, or a DIRHANDLE to test the associated file to see, if something is true about it. If the argument is omitted, it tests $_. -w returns 1 for true and an empty string for false. If the file doesn't exist or can't be examined, it returns <tt>undef</tt> and sets <tt>$!</tt> (<tt>errno</tt>).