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I am trying to get some clarity on Perl's ability to rename non-ascii files. I would like to rename only non-ascii files in a directory that contains ascii and non-ascii filenames.

However, I am finding that with the standard Perl rename(oldfilename, newfilename) I recieve a "Permission Denied at <STDIN> line xxx" where xxx is the line containing the rename command. This error only appears when Perl attempts to rename a non-ascii filename.

Using the bactick rename: `rename \"oldfilename\" \"newfilename\"` the program seems to work with the caveat that Perl sees the non-ascii filenames as question marks ????? ????? and seems to find multiple duplicates and cannot rename all found. Error: Duplicate filename or file cannot be found.

Here is my code, I have many versions but this is my latest:

my $count = 1;
print "Path to directory for renaming:\n";
chomp($dirname = <STDIN>);
chdir $dirname or die "Cannot change to $dirname";
opendir(DIR, $dirname) or die "Cannot open $dirname";

while($myfile = readdir(DIR))
{
  $locate = telldir(DIR);
  if($myfile !~ m/[\?]+/gi)
  {
    print "$myfile: File is ascii\n";
  }
  elsif($myfile =~ m/[\? ]+(\([0-9]+\))?\.(\w+)\i)  #catches filenames
+ ???.txt or ????(2).txt 
  {
    $count++;
    print "$myfile: File is non-ascii\n";
    $ext = $2;
    $temp = "Non-Ascii_Filename_$count";
    $newname = join "." $temp, $ext;
    rename($myfile, $newname) or warn $!;
    #rename \"$myfile\" \"$newname\"; #attempt with backtics
  }
  seekdir(DIR, $locate);
}
closedir(DIR);
[download]

Build: Active Perl v5.8.4
System: Windows XP Pro
Is there a better way to achieve the renaming of files, as neither of these methods are effective?
Thanks in advance.
john

In reply to Renaming non-ascii files by jon12

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