In perl is \*STDIN the same as STDIN?

I'm the author of Pythonizer and I'm trying to translate the code of CGI.pm from the standard perl library to Python. I came across this code in read_from_client:

read(\*STDIN, $$buff, $len, $offset)

Is \*STDIN the same thing as just STDIN? I'm not understanding why they are using it this way. Thanks for your help!

The module also references \*main::STDIN - is this the same as STDIN too (I would translate plain STDIN to sys.stdin in python)? Code:

foreach my $fh (
    \*main::STDOUT,
    \*main::STDIN,
    \*main::STDERR,
) { ... }

The following can usually be used a file handle:

• An IO object (*STDIN{IO})
• A glob containing an IO object (*STDIN)
• A reference to a glob containing an IO object (\*STDIN)
• The name of a glob containing an IO object ("STDIN")

The builtin operators that expect a file handle allow you to omit the * when providing a glob. For example, read( FH, ... ) means read( *FH, ... ).

The builtin functions that expect a file handle should accept all of these. So you could any of the following:

• read( *STDIN{IO}, ... )
• read( STDIN, ... )
• read( *STDIN, ... )
• read( \*STDIN, ... )
• read( "STDIN", ... ).

They will have the same effect.

Third-party libraries probably accept the globs and reference to globs, and they should also expect IO objects. I expect the least support for providing the name as a string. Your mileage may vary.

You can't go wrong with a reference to a glob (\*FH) since that's what open( my $fh, ... ) produces.