In your code, you are checking whether you have a file (-f). Maybe you want to do something there if you have a directory (-d)?

Note that you get the directory likely before all the files, so you might need to remember that you want to unlink rmdir a directory after you've successfully moved all the files.

Update Laurent_R noted the difference between unlink and rmdir.

Hi, Thank you for the reply. My dilemma is that the file (-f) could be way under multiple subdirectories. How can I effectively capture those so I can pass that to a variable to later do the unlink?

Whenever you find a directory, remember it to be deleted afterwards?

my @to_be_deleted;

File::Find( ..., sub {
    if( -d $File::Find::name ) {
        print "'$File::Find::name' should be deleted later\n";
        # push @to_be_deleted, $File::Find::name;
    };
};

rmdir @to_be_deleted; # boom
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Hi, You could use the more powerful, more user-friendly Path::Iterator::Rule for iterating through directory trees and Path::Tiny for file handling. Note that you can pass an anonymous subroutine as the value of the visitor option to the iterator call, to handle the matching files as they are found.

In the following demonstration we want to move into B/ any files with .txt extension and no contents, found in any subdirectory of A/, then delete the subdirectory if empty. (You can of course use more meaningful conditions, e.g. test for file size, or age, or even matching contents. See the doc. Also see SEE ALSO in the doc for a discussion of the various tools that can be used for this task.)

use strict; use warnings; use feature 'say';

use Path::Iterator::Rule;
use Path::Tiny;

my $root = './1204707';
my $in   = $root . '/A'; 
my $to   = $root . '/B';

my $rule = Path::Iterator::Rule->new;
$rule->file->name( qr/txt$/ );
$rule->file->empty;

my $next = $rule->iter( $in, {
    depthfirst => 1,
    visitor => sub {
        my $path = path( shift );
        my $parent = $path->parent;
        $path->move( $to . '/' . $path->basename );
        rmdir $parent if not $parent->children;
    },
});

while ( defined( my $file = $next->() ) ) {
    say "processing $file";
}

__END__
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First set up the test files. We expect after running the program that there will be five empty text files in B/, and that A/bb (and subdir) will have been removed.

$ ls -goR 1204707

# File size here
#            |
#            V

1204707:
total 8
drwxrwxr-x 5 4096 Dec  2 08:56 A
drwxrwxr-x 2 4096 Dec  2 08:56 B

1204707/A:
total 12
drwxrwxr-x 2 4096 Dec  2 08:56 aa
drwxrwxr-x 3 4096 Dec  2 08:56 bb
drwxrwxr-x 2 4096 Dec  2 08:56 cc

1204707/A/aa:
total 20
-rw-rw-r-- 1 8 Dec  2 08:56 file1.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 0 Dec  2 08:56 file2.txt

1204707/A/bb:
total 20
drwxrwxr-x 2 4096 Dec  2 08:56 aaa
-rw-rw-r-- 1    0 Dec  2 08:56 file3.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1    0 Dec  2 08:56 file4.txt

1204707/A/bb/aaa:
total 8
-rw-rw-r-- 1 0 Dec  2 08:56 file7.txt

1204707/A/cc:
total 20
-rw-rw-r-- 1 0 Dec  2 08:56 file5.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 8 Dec  2 08:56 file6.dat

1204707/B:
total 0
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Run the program:

$ perl 1204707.pl

processing ./1204707/A/aa/file2.txt
processing ./1204707/A/bb/aaa/file7.txt
processing ./1204707/A/bb/file3.txt
processing ./1204707/A/bb/file4.txt
processing ./1204707/A/cc/file5.txt
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Check the directory tree after running the program:

ls -goR 1204707
1204707:
total 8
drwxrwxr-x 4 4096 Dec  2 08:57 A
drwxrwxr-x 2 4096 Dec  2 08:57 B

1204707/A:
total 8
drwxrwxr-x 2 4096 Dec  2 08:57 aa
drwxrwxr-x 2 4096 Dec  2 08:57 cc

1204707/A/aa:
total 12
-rw-rw-r-- 1 8 Dec  2 08:56 file1.txt

1204707/A/cc:
total 12
-rw-rw-r-- 1 8 Dec  2 08:56 file6.dat

1204707/B:
total 40
-rw-rw-r-- 1 0 Dec  2 08:56 file2.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 0 Dec  2 08:56 file3.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 0 Dec  2 08:56 file4.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 0 Dec  2 08:56 file5.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 0 Dec  2 08:56 file7.txt
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Hope this helps!

hi those are some cool stuff!!!... thanks!... i quickly tried but some behavior is not what i wanted to occur: 1. the input directory is also deleted; i only wanted to remove the subdirectory 2. the input directory is also created into the output directory; i just need to create the subdirs & the files in it any other recommendation is much appreciated.

Hi, You just need to get your rules right and your visitor sub right. Read the Path::Iterator::Rule doc for the rules, and post your code here including the rules and your handler sub and we'll get it straight!



The way forward always starts with a minimal test.

 
use File::Find;
finddepth sub { -d $_ and rmdir $_ }, "yourtopoftree";
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should work to remove empty directories.

Re: Moving files recursively to new subfolder