File::Find, File::Spec, and full paths.

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

Greetings, monks.

I'm using File::Find in my current mini-project, and it's working well, but I'm having problems getting the full pathnames of the files it finds.

To start, my script takes from the command line a directory to pass to File::Find. This direcory can be a relative path.

I know that I can use the follow attribute to File::Find to get at the $fullname variable, but there may or may not be a symlink somewhere in the search path, which might muck up the results.

So, I tried using File::Spec and abs2rel, but am getting odd results if I pass a relative path. It'd be best to show my code and some output, so here's the relevant bits:

!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Image::Size;
use Data::Dumper;
use File::Find;
use File::Spec;

use vars qw/*name *dir/;
*name        = *File::Find::name;
*dir         = *File::Find::dir;

die "Usage: filecomp <path> <pattern>\n" unless (@ARGV == 2);

my ($path, $pat) = @ARGV;
my $qpat = qr/$pat/i;

chomp (my $cwd = `pwd`);
my $abspath = File::Spec->rel2abs($path, $cwd);

print "Absolute base path is ",$abspath, "\n";

print "Location                                   Filesize\n";

File::Find::find({wanted => \&wanted, 
#             follow => 1
            }, 
            $path);

sub wanted {
  /^$qpat/ && do {
    my $fullname = File::Spec->rel2abs($name, $abspath);
    printf "\n ------------- \n\$fullname is %s\n", $fullname;
    printf "\$name is %s\n", $name;

--Results, with output from find to show that the files do exist--
[eggie@sunlink eggie]$ find tmp -name 'term*' -ls
  4103    1 -rw-------   1 eggie    eggie         160 Sep  2 16:52 tmp
+/terminal.txt
675863    1 -rw-------   1 eggie    eggie         160 Sep  3 14:35 tmp
+/foo/terminal.txt
[eggie@sunlink eggie]$ filecomp.pl tmp 'term.*'
Absolute base path is /home/eggie/tmp
Location                                   Filesize

 ------------- 
$fullname is /home/eggie/tmp/tmp/terminal.txt
$name is tmp/terminal.txt

 ------------- 
$fullname is /home/eggie/tmp/tmp/foo/terminal.txt
$name is tmp/foo/terminal.txt
[download]

See the extra "tmp/" in the $fullname variable? Things look even uglier the deeper in the subdir that a file is found, something like /home/eggie/tmp/foo/bar/baz/foo/bar/baz/terminal.txt when it should be only /home/eggie/foo/bar/baz/terminal.txt Is this a bug/limitation in File::Spec? Do any of you know of a way around this, other than enabling follow in File::Find? (This is Perl, fer crying out loud, it should be possible.) Thanks in advance.

There are 10 kinds of people -- those that understand binary, and those that don't.

Comment on File::Find, File::Spec, and full paths. Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: File::Find, File::Spec, and full paths. by sauoq (Abbot) on Sep 03, 2002 at 19:45 UTC
You are setting your `$abspath` variable incorrectly. `$File::Find::name` will be the relative path from the directory you are in (i.e. `pwd`) not the directory where you start looking (i.e. the first argument to your script.) Try just setting `$abspath` to `pwd` and chomp. Alternatively, you could call find() with `$abspath` rather than `$path`. -sauoq "My two cents aren't worth a dime.";	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: File::Find, File::Spec, and full paths. by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Sep 04, 2002 at 03:39 UTC
Or rather than `pwd`, `use Cwd;` and then set `$abspath` to `cwd()`. That will, the documentation says, most likely do `pwd` on Unix systems. However, Cwd will work on Windows and other systems where `pwd` isn't available. Makeshifts last the longest.	[reply]
Re: Re: File::Find, File::Spec, and full paths. by mephit (Scribe) on Sep 03, 2002 at 21:07 UTC
This seemed to do the trick. I didn't really want to use find() with an absolute path if the user specified a relative path, as I wanted the value of $name to be relative if relative was supplied on the command line. I had a strong feeling that the problem was in how I was calling rel2abs, but couldn't figure out exactly how. Thanks to all that replied. -- There are 10 kinds of people -- those that understand binary, and those that don't.	[reply]
Re: File::Find, File::Spec, and full paths. by metlhed_ (Beadle) on Sep 03, 2002 at 19:17 UTC
I believe what your looking for is $File::Find::name. This will give you the complete pathname to the file. For more information check out File::Find on CPAN.	[reply]
Re: Re: File::Find, File::Spec, and full paths. by sauoq (Abbot) on Sep 03, 2002 at 19:52 UTC
He already is using `$File::Find::name`. He said he wants an absolute path not just a "complete pathname." `$File::Find::name` is a relative path appended to the path argument supplied to the find function. So, if you provide a relative path argument, `$File::Find::name` will also be relative. -sauoq "My two cents aren't worth a dime.";	[reply] [d/l] [select]