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

I want to get the list of files that are in one directory. The only method to do this that I have found till now is 
@list = (<*>)

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But when the directory contains a file which name contains a blank character, I have two entries for it in my list, e.g. :

if there is file called "aaa bbb", the list is (... ,"aaa", "bbb", ...) but I want (... ,"aaa bbb", ...) Anyone knows where the solution dwells ?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: file with a blank in its name
by marcos (Scribe) on May 05, 2000 at 15:02 UTC
    I would use opendir and readdir:
    opendir (DIR, $dir) or die "cannot opendir $dir";
my @files = readdir(DIR);
closedir (DIR);

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    if you want only files (no subdirectory) you may use:
    opendir (DIR, $dir) or die "cannot opendir $dir";
my @only_files = grep {-f "$dir/$_"} readdir(DIR);
closedir (DIR);

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    marcos
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      If you're retrieving all filenames using opendir and readdir (which is the way I usually do it), then you'll want to filter out at least directories (and possibly smylinks as well)
      Here's one way to do it (modified from example in The Perl Cookbook): 
      $dir = 'path/to/directory';
opendir(DIR, $dir) or dir "Can't open $dir: $!";
while (defined($file = readdir DIR)) {
    #Test if $file is a directory
    unless (-d "$dir/$file") {
        #Test if $file is a symlink
        unless (-l "$dir/$file") {
            #push $file onto @list
            push(@list,$file);
        }
    }
}

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Re: file with a blank in its name
by BBQ (Curate) on May 05, 2000 at 16:43 UTC 
    my $path = '/home/bbq/tmp';
my @contents = glob($path);

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    You'll have to sort out what got thrown into @contents if all you really want are just the files (you'll get files, dirs, sym links, devs, the whole gazoo). You could do a few checks before using each @contents. If you want a recursive example, I posted something a while back on this node which might be of interest.

    HTH

    #!/home/bbq/bin/perl
    # Trust no1!
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Re: file with a blank in its name
by athomason (Curate) on May 05, 2000 at 14:18 UTC
    You want to use readdir instead. You should just be able to replace the (<*>) construct with that (you'll need to open a directory handle first, though).
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Re: file with a blank in its name
by takshaka (Friar) on May 06, 2000 at 00:09 UTC
    While I agree with everyone that suggests readdir over glob for anything but a quick hack, is this a platform-dependent problem (ie, a shell thing)? Both 5.6 and 5.005_03's glob work fine for me on Linux: 
    chh@scallop ~> touch "Foo bar"
chh@scallop ~> perl -le 'print grep /\s/, <*>'
Foo bar
chh@scallop ~> perl -le '@f = <*>; print grep /\s/, @f'
Foo bar

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    I'm on the road and don't have access to a Windows box to check, but I seem to remember something funky about Win32's glob and long filenames.
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      It works for me with both ActiveState 522 and 613 (that's 5.005_3 and 5.6, for those of you keeping score) on NT. My test program was: 
      my @files = grep /\s/, <*>;
foreach my $file (@files) {
    print ">>$file<<\n";
}

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      On both versions, that caught long filenames successfully. On a Linux box with GNU bash, version 1.14.7(1) and Perl 5.005_3, it works as well.

      (since the Win98 box has become a Linux Distribution Installer Testbed, I can't report on that. :)

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      I had heard in the past that ActiveState's distribution had a quirky glob, it that it would only return the correct values for "*.*" instead of "*", but I have just run a test on a NT box and this is what I got...
      Orders, Sir? cd \usr\local

Orders, Sir? ls -la
total 0
-d----         0  3-Mar-100 03:28 .
-d----         0  3-Mar-100 03:28 ..
-d----         0  3-Mar-100 03:29 apache
-d----         0 15-Apr-100 21:37 bin
-d----         0  7-Dec-99 03:34 cgi-bin
-d----         0  6-Dec-99 21:58 ftpd
ad----         0 24-Feb-100 18:24 httpd
-d----         0  7-Dec-99 02:19 iissamples
-d----         0 22-Apr-100 22:45 mysql
-d----         0  6-Dec-99 21:58 scripts
-d----         0  7-Dec-99 21:11 uia

Orders, Sir? perl
foreach (glob("*")) {
  print ++$x.". $_\n";
}
^Z
1. apache
2. bin
3. cgi-bin
4. ftpd
5. httpd
6. iissamples
7. mysql
8. scripts
9. uia

Orders, Sir?

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      Apart from the current directory and the parent directory, everything got listed, exactly as it would on a real system. (and I know the contents of \usr\local don't look too much like an NT box, but beleive me! It is! I just don't like the stuff that ships with NT)
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      Well, to close the book on the tests, I checked ActiveState 522 on Win98SE and got the same results as on NT. <*> returns long filenames--with or without extensions, with or without spaces--and does not do an implicit split on the list when assigning to an array. I can't reproduce the behavior cited by the OP.

      However, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, I still believe there are some issues with 522's glob.

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RE: file with a blank in its name
by Anonymous Monk on May 05, 2000 at 19:01 UTC
    You should have tried to use: @list = (<"*">) instead of: @list = (<*>) -Fariz-
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Re: file with a blank in its name
by Anonymous Monk on May 05, 2000 at 23:43 UTC
    I know this doesn't really answer your question, but I would really recommend using 

    @files = glob("*"); 
rather than
@files = <*>;

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    Using the glob function makes your code far clearer. Imagine someone new to Perl looking at your script -- even finding entries for < > in the manual are going to be harder!

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Re: file with a blank in its name
by t0mas (Priest) on May 05, 2000 at 21:01 UTC
    I usually use 
    opendir(DIR, $rDir) || die "Can't opendir $rDir: $!";
my @files = grep { -f "$rDir/$_" } readdir(DIR);
closedir DIR;

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    /t0mas
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