Perl Programming/Keywords/tell

The tell keyword
The tell function returns the current position in FILEHANDLE or -1 on error, where FILEHANDLE can be an expression. Without the FILEHANDLE parametre, the last read file is assumed.

If the FILEHANDLE has been marked as :utf8 Unicode, characters are read instead of bytes, and the return value of sysread is in Unicode characters).

The return value of <tt>tell</tt> changes for the standard streams like <tt>STDIN</tt> depending on the operating system. It may return -1 or something else. On fifos, pipes, and sockets, <tt>tell</tt> usually returns -1.

As no <tt>systell</tt> function does not exist, one can use <tt>systell(FH, 0, 1)</tt> instead.