When you run your command at the shell, any unescaped wildcards are expanded according to what files they match. So if there are three files, 1.pl, 2.pl, and 3.pl in the directory, then this:

./rename *.pl "s/^/old_/"

# will be expanded to this:

./rename 1.pl 2.pl 3.pl s/^/old_/

# and set @ARGV like so:
$ARGV[0] == '1.pl';
$ARGV[1] == '2.pl';
$ARGV[2] == '3.pl';
$ARGV[3] == 's/^/old_/';
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So if you want to call it in that order, you have a couple of options. You can escape the asterisk in *.pl with a backslash or by putting it in single quotes, so that the shell will pass it to the script as a single argument, and it'll end up in $ARGV[0] as you expected. The other option is to allow the shell to expand the filenames, then get your regex from the last argument with pop, leaving the filenames in @ARGV:

my $pattern = pop @ARGV;
for my $file (@ARGV){
   my $new = $file;
   # apply pattern and rename
}
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If you use the second method, you don't need the opendir/readdir, because the shell is taking care of that for you. That method is probably simpler, but it's less cross-platform since it assumes the shell knows how to do wildcard expansion.

Just to add to that: Perl knows how to do filename expansion too: glob

Writing *.pl in a shell (not sure if CMD too) will expand automatically BEFORE it is handed over to perl's @ARGV, better quote everything!
Then there is this guy called Larry Wall, he wrote something similar once, take a look: Simple Perl file rename (posted by hilitai).

Your code almost works.... fight on!

Writing *.pl in a shell (not sure if CMD too) will expand automatically BEFORE it is handed over to perl's @ARGV, better quote everything!

No, DOS, Windows, and OS/2 don't behave like Unix at all. That would be far too easy. ;-) See Re^3: Perl Rename for a longer discussion and a workaround.

Updated: Bad wording. Win32::Autoglob really does not help here (see AM answer below), it only helps hiding one difference between Win32 and Unix systems.

Alexander

--
Today I will gladly share my knowledge and experience, for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so". ;-)

Your suggested solution Win32::Autoglob would break any "regex" arguments the OP would pass ... a simple glob ought to suffice (or a specific File::DosGlob )

Note that the glob built-in will give you filenames with the path.

Funny thing is that in other languages i don't have that problem only PERL always beat me down.

Fight back, Basic debugging checklist , Data::Dump::dd( \@ARGV );

G'day keltan,

"Yes this is my homework but i dont need direct answers i appreciate tips."

Thanks for being upfront and honest about that (++). Here's some tips:

• Consider using the builtin module Getopt::Long for handling your command line arguments.
• Consider using the warnings pragma instead of the '-w' switch. The documentation explains why.
• The rename documentation points out some caveats:
  • The portability issues (rename in perlport) mentions "Win32" — 'D:\test' (in your code) indicates this may be relevant to you.
  • Consider the suggested, platform-independent move() function of the builtin module File::Copy.
• Avoid package variables for directory handles (DIR in your posted code is an example): these have global scope and suffer from the same problems as all global variables. Prefer lexical variables whose scope you can control — readdir shows a couple of usage examples.
  • Unrelated to your current question but, for future reference, and for the same reasons, avoid package variables for filehandles — open has examples using lexical filehandles.

my $pattern = qr/$test/;
my $pattern1 = qr/$test1/;
# ...
        $new =~ s/$pattern/$pattern1/;
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I think you have another problem here: The right-hand side of s/// (REPLACEMENT in s/PATTERN/REPLACEMENT/) is not a regular expression, but a string. See Regexp Quote Like Operators. Your use of qr// makes a regular expression from the second argument, then stringifies it. That will very likely give you an unexpected result:

>perl -e '$x="abc"; $p=qr/b/; $r=qr/X/; $x=~s/$p/$r/; print $x'
a(?^:X)c
>
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Alexander