Normally people are pretty good at helping here, if you show what you've done and don't just request that people write code for you, for free.

I'd suggest you probably want to start by looking at the File::Find module, as this lets you recurse easily and then take actions on the files.

That said if you just want to get the damn thing done why not use the find command?

find /glb/home/usjak8/myperl ! -iname 'dir3' -print -delete

That will print and delete anything beneath "/glb/home/.." which doesn't have dir3 in the name. If you wished to log just add "| tee ~/delete.log" on the end.

• perlintro
• chdir
• opendir, readdir, grep
• open a file for output
• File::Path remove_tree

#!/usr/bin/perl --
##
##
## perltidy -olq  -csc -csci=3 -cscl="sub : BEGIN END " -otr -opr -ce 
+-nibc -i=4 -pt=0   "-nsak=*"
## perltidy -olq  -csc -csci=10 -cscl="sub : BEGIN END if " -otr -opr 
+-ce -nibc -i=4 -pt=0   "-nsak=*"
#!/usr/bin/perl --
use strict;
use warnings;
use Path::Tiny qw/ tempdir path /;

Main( @ARGV );
exit( 0 );

sub Main {
    my $dad = tempdir;
    MakeKids( $dad );
    for my $kid ( NotKids( $dad, 2, 2, 2 ) ) {
        ListAll( $dad );
        path( $kid )->remove_tree;
    }
    ListAll( $dad );
    $dad->remove_tree;    ## cleanup tempdir
} ## end sub Main

sub NotKids {
    my $dad = shift;
    my %notKid = map { $_ => !!1 } @_;
    my @nots;
    for my $kid ( $dad->children ) {
        if( not exists $notKid{ $kid->basename } ) {
            push @nots, $kid;
        }
    }
    return @nots;
} ## end sub NotKids

sub ListAll {
    my( $dad ) = @_;
    my $iter = path( $dad )->iterator( { recurse => 1, } );
    while( my $kid = $iter->() ) {
        print "$kid\n";
    }
    print "\n";
} ## end sub ListAll

sub MakeKids {
    my( $dad ) = @_;
    for my $ix ( 1 .. 3 ) {
        for my $iy ( 1 .. 3 ) {
            my $kid = path( $dad, $ix, $iy );
            $kid->touchpath->spew( "$kid" );
        }
    }
} ## end sub MakeKids
[download]

Perl Tutorial Hub

A few thought-questions and food-for-thought bits here:

(1)   Might this be an “XY Problem?”   Might the thing that you are “ultimately trying to accomplish,” in fact be a well-known problem that has been addressed already ... say, by a command such as logrotate?   “Writing a brand-new program,” in whatever language it might be, is a pretty-cool thing to have done, unless (heh, heh ...) at the end you discover that someone else, a dozen years ago or more, already did it infinitely-better.   (Ouch!)   Frankly, this requirement smells a lot like just such a situation.

(1a)   I say this from “red-faced experience.”   ’Nuff said ...

(1b)   To make this assessment fairly, you must “drag yourself, kicking-and-screaming, away from How,” and force yourself to stare at What.

(2)   If you do find that you need to monkey with a directory-structure in this way, let me strongly advise you to write your code so that it does the job in two distinct stages.   First, it should scan the target directory to gather-up a list of contained directories ... remembering (Ouch! #2 ...) to ignore "." and "..".   Fully complete the scan, then process your list.   In other words, do not attempt to manipulate the directory structure during the scan.