CODEWITHSUNDEEP
perl
justaguy
justaguy

Reputation: 3022

create new file listing all text files in a directory with perl

I am trying to list out all text files in a directory using perl. The below does run but the resulting file is empty. This seems close but maybe it is not what I need. Thank you :).

get_list.pl

#!/bin/perl

# create a list of all *.txt files in the current directory
opendir(DIR, ".");
@files = grep(/\..txt$/,readdir(DIR));
closedir(DIR);

# print all the filenames in our array
foreach $file (@files) {
print "$file\n";
}

Upvotes: 0

Views: 132

Answers (2)

MarcoS
MarcoS

Reputation: 17711

You have one excess dot:

@files = grep(/\..txt$/,readdir(DIR));

should be:

@files = grep(/\.txt$/,readdir(DIR));

Upvotes: 2

Sobrique
Sobrique

Reputation: 53478

As written, your grep is wrong:

@files = grep(/\..txt$/,readdir(DIR));

In regular expressions - . means any character. So you will find a file called 

fish.mtxt

But not a file called

fish.txt

Because of that dot.

You probably want to grep /\.txt/, readdir(DIR)

But personally, I wouldn't bother, and just use glob instead. 

foreach my $file (glob "*.txt") {
    print $file,"\n";
}

Also - turn on use strict; use warnings;. Consider them mandatory until you know why you want to turn them off. (There are occasions, but you'll know what they are if you ever REALLY NEED to).

Upvotes: 5

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