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Remembering values from multiple condition 'if'

by Bukowski (Deacon)
on Jul 01, 2002 at 17:36 UTC ( [id://178616]=perlquestion: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??

Bukowski has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello gracious PerlMonks,

I have a short question, its perplexing me but its the end of the day and I am decaffeinated...

Let us say I have a series of filetests in an 'if' statement like this:

if (-e "$f" || -e "$a" || -e "$scratchfile" || -e "$fasta_output") { print "Files belonging to a previous version exist\n"; #delete old files somehow }else{ #continue with analysis }
If one, or more, of those files exists, how can I delete them by directly referencing the results of the 'if' statement, rather than writing 4 separate 'unlink's for each of the conditions tested? I am sure there is a more elegant way to do it than the way I will do it if I carry on uneducated...

Many thanks, in advance,

Bukowski - aka Dan (dcs@black.hole-in-the.net)
"Coffee for the mind, Pizza for the body, Sushi for the soul" -Userfriendly

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Remembering values from multiple condition 'if'
by broquaint (Abbot) on Jul 01, 2002 at 17:44 UTC
    Perhaps it would be better it iterate through the files like so
    foreach my $file ($f, $a, $scratchfile, $fasta_output) { if(-e $file) { print "Files belonging to a previous version exist\n"; unlink $file; } else { ... } }
    Also note you don't have to quote the filenames like you might in a shell script as perl Does The Right Thing.
    HTH

    _________
    broquaint

Re: Remembering values from multiple condition 'if'
by Corion (Patriarch) on Jul 01, 2002 at 17:46 UTC

    I think you're wanting to do too much in one step. I'd do it the following way :

    sub unlink_exists { my ($filename) = @_; if (-e $filename) { unlink $filename or die "Couldn't remove '$filename' : $!\n"; print "Removed $filename\n"; }; return 1; }; unlink_exists($_) for ($f,$a,$scratchfile,$fasta_output);

    This will, of course print up to 4 lines instead of one line, but it's much more readable in my opinion, and also provides you with much better diagnostics.

    It's not possible to write unlink_exists as a function that returns true if the file was detected and successfully removed like the following :

    sub unlink_exists { my ($filename) = @_; my $result = -e $filename; if ($result) { unlink $filename or die "Couldn't remove '$filename' : $!\n"; }; return $result; }; if ( unlink_exists($a) || unlink_exists($f) ... );

    because Perl does not fully evaluate expressions - it stops as soon as the expressions value is determined.

    perl -MHTTP::Daemon -MHTTP::Response -MLWP::Simple -e ' ; # The $d = new HTTP::Daemon and fork and getprint $d->url and exit;#spider ($c = $d->accept())->get_request(); $c->send_response( new #in the HTTP::Response(200,$_,$_,qq(Just another Perl hacker\n))); ' # web
Re: Remembering values from multiple condition 'if'
by lestrrat (Deacon) on Jul 01, 2002 at 17:44 UTC

    When in doubt, rethink code structure... ;)

    for my $file ( qw/ file1 file2 file3 file4 ) { if( -e $file ) { unlink($file) || print STDERR "error unlinking $file: $!\n"; } }
      There's really no point in testing to see if an unlink might succeed before attempting it. Just do the unlink:
      unlink qw/ file1 file2 file3 file4 /;
      Although your way is cooler if you want clean error messages if something goes wrong.

      -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

Re: Remembering values from multiple condition 'if'
by TheHobbit (Pilgrim) on Jul 01, 2002 at 21:40 UTC

    Hi,
    besides the solution proposed by other monks, there is the following

    use strict; my @files = grep ($_,map -e $_ && $_ , qw(foo foobar bar)); if (@files) { print "there are files\n"; #here @files holds the names of the files print(join(",",@files),"\n"); } else { print "no files\n"; }
    which places the existing file's names in an array.

    cheers


    Leo TheHobbit
      Argh, I'm out of votes. Consider yourself ++ed. Just a question though, why don't you just do like so? my @files = grep -e, qw(foo foobar bar); ____________
      Makeshifts last the longest.

        Hi,
        Well, with that grep, @files will end up containing only ones, and you'll not even be able to sort out exactly 'which' files where there...

        Cheers


        Leo TheHobbit

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