Filehandle Quirk Perl - perl

Question

In the following code if there is space between FILE and ( in the printf statement
like
printf FILE ("Test string inline\n");
Perl will treat FILE as a filehandle otherwise
printf FILE("Test string inline\n");
will be treated as subroutine call(If no subroutine is defined by FILE perl will through an error Undefined subroutine &main::FILE called at ./test.pl line xx ). Isn't there a better way Perl can implement this ? (Maybe this is why bareword filehandles are considered outdated ?)
#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
open(FILE,">test.txt");
printf FILE ("Test string inline\n");
close(FILE);
sub FILE
{
return("Test string subroutine\n");
}

Answer 1

Are you asking how to avoid that error accidentally? You could wrap the handle in curlies
printf({ HANDLE } $pattern, #args);
print({ HANDLE } #args);
say({ HANDLE } #args);
Or since parens are often omitted for say, print and printf,
printf { HANDLE } $pattern, #args;
print { HANDLE } #args;
say { HANDLE } #args;
Or you could use a method call
HANDLE->printf($pattern, #args);
HANDLE->print(#args);
HANDLE->say(#args);

Answer 2

Try:
#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;
# --------------------------------------
use charnames qw( :full :short );
use English qw( -no_match_vars ) ; # Avoids regex performance penalty
my $test_file = 'test.txt';
open my $test_fh, '>', $test_file or die "could not open $test_file: $OS_ERROR\n";
printf {$test_fh} "Test string inline" or die "could not print $test_file: $OS_ERROR\n";
close $test_fh or die "could not close $test_file: $OS_ERROR\n";