Perl provides file handling functions like open, close, read, and write. The open function is used to open a file, specifying the mode (read, write, append, etc.). After processing, the close function is used to close the file handle. The operator is often employed for reading lines from a file. Error handling is important, and it's common to see constructs like open my $fh, '<', 'filename.txt' or die $!; to gracefully handle file-related errors.