File::Remote allows you to transparently work with both local
and remote files, without having to know which is which or
even care.  It has replacements for the Perl builtin file 
functions such as open(), close(), and so on which will handle
both local AND remote files.  This means that you can use
File::Remote for *all* your file operations since it will handle
any type of file you throw at it (it passes local files through
to the Perl core functions).

This means you don't have to put a whole bunch of checks in
your code for whether a file is remote, and if so use rsh/rcp,
etc - this module does all of that transparently.  For example,
this module allows you to do this:

   # Replace Perl builtin functions
   use File::Remote qw(:replace);

   open(FILE, ">> host:/path/to/file") or die "Can't open: $!\n";
   print FILE "New line\n";
   close(FILE);

   open(FILE2, "< /local/file");	# still works!
   print while (<FILE2>);
   close(FILE2);

File::Remote supports both and object-oriented interface and
a function-oriented interface (shown above), and supports all
of the following standard file functions:

   open    close    touch   unlink   copy   move
   mkdir   rmdir    chmod   chown

As well a few others:

   readfile	- read whole file in one call
   writefile	- write whole file in one call
   append	- append to file in one call
   prepend	- prepend to file in one call
   backup	- make a backup copy of a file

To install the software:

   gunzip File-Remote-1.10.tar.gz
   tar xvf File-Remote-1.10.tar
   cd File-Remote-1.10
   perl Makefile.PL
   make && make test && make install

Copyright (c) 1998-2000, Nathan Wiger (nate@sun.com). All
rights reserved.

This module is free software; you may copy this under the
terms of the GNU General Public License, or the Artistic
License, copies of which should have accompanied your Perl
kit.