Feeding a Python array into a Perl script

I've created an example using three scripts.

The first one is a Python script that creates a list, then writes it to a JSON file. We then have a Perl script that reads in the JSON, modifies it (adds three more elements to the array), then writes it back to the JSON data file. The last script, in Python, shows how to read in JSON and use the data.

Python script, create a list, write it out to a json file

import json

data = [1, 2, 3]

with open('data.json', 'w') as jsonfile:
    json.dump(data, jsonfile)

The data file now looks like:

[1, 2, 3]

Perl script, reads the JSON file, mucks with the data, writes it back out:

use warnings;
use strict;

use JSON;

my $file = 'data.json';

# read in json from Python

my $json;

{
    local $/;
    open my $fh, '<', $file or die $!;
    $json = <$fh>;
    close $fh;
}

my $array = decode_json $json;

# modify the list (array)

push @$array, (4, 5, 6);

# re-encode the changed data, write it back to a json file

$json = encode_json $array;
open my $fh, '>', $file or die $!;
print $fh $json;
close $fh or die $!;

Data file now looks like:

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

Python script, reads the updated JSON file, and transforms it back into a list:

import json

file = 'data.json';
data = json.loads(open(file).read())

print(data)

Prints:

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]