You have been banging on essentially the same issue for at least two months now (see Rename filenames in perl using regex). Maybe it's time for you to step back and gain some fundamental skills? The most important immediate skill you could hone is using resources such as perldoc to figure out how Perl works. Of immediate interest are perlretut, perlre and perlreref.

Spending a little time and effort now to learn about the tools Perl offers and to learn how to efficiently find the information you need solve problems will save you much more time and effort in the long run than using PerlMonks as a crutch every time you hit a minor issue.

I wish I could up-vote GrandFather's comment twice again!

You must always remember that the primary goal is to drain the swamp even when you are hip-deep in alligators.

im just glad no one hazarded to responded with a perl script. shocking!

What you are attempting to do is not clear to me. The way you have this written, it is only going to find one folder called "folder1" and rename it as you have specified. To do multiple folders I would think that you would have to have a loop there somewhere.

Perhaps you want all folders below folder1 renamed? What you are asking for does not seem to line up with what you are coding.

I think perhaps what you might find helpful is to list out what exactly you have for folders, then write out what you expect to happen to each one. Then you will have an outline of what you have, what you want to have, and psudo-code to write against.

Then if you have questions, it will be clear what the question is about...

Hope that is helpful...

use strict;
use warnings;

my $existingFile;
my $filename;

print "provide filename: ";

$existingFile    = <STDIN>;
$filename        = "folder1";

chomp $existingFile;
chomp $filename;

my $counter = 1;     #declare counter

if (-e $filename) {
    print "File Exists! Renaming with .[x]\n";
    $counter++;        #increment already declared counter with value 
+assigned
    rename "$existingFile", "$filename.[$counter]";
    } 
    else {
    rename "$existingFile", "$filename";
}
exit;
[download]

Hmm, not such a good illustration. You initialise $counter with the string '1', not with the number 1. Perl is smart enough to Do What You Mean, but you are telling people who read your code the wrong thing.

You have also carried over the OP's bad habit of needlessly interpolating variables into strings. Using interpolation for "$filename.[$counter]" is appropriate but elsewhere you should simply use the variable: rename $existingFile, $filename.

If there is no algorithmic reason to use the post increment operators, always use pre increment. Sticking the ++ or -- out the front (++$counter) makes them easier to see which is a Good Thing^™.

Perl is the programming world's equivalent of English

ah ok, i did not even know you could put ++ or -- on the opposite side. also ill change '1' to 1 so it is a better example.