Perl Programming/Keywords/close

The close keyword
The function close closes the file or pipe associated with FILEHANDLE, flushes the I/O buffers, and closes the system file descriptor. Returns true, if all operations succeed and if no error was reported by any PerlIO layer. Closes the currently selected FILEHANDLE, if the argument is omitted.

As an open will close the FILEHANDLE, it is not necessary to close the FILEHANDLE in this case, although an explicit <tt>close</tt> on an input file resets the file counter (<tt>$.</tt>).