gnu@perl has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I have a program that gets its info from a config file, that config file names other files within it. I would like to be able to use file name globbing in the config file. This will allow me to put one entry into the file instead of >100.

The problem I have is when I am parsing the config file. I am checking each entry to see if it is valid or not before acting on it. Here is a psuedo code example: 

$fileGlob = /var/adm/messages.*;

for (< $fileGlob >){
  do some things to check each file....
}

[download]

This works fine, the problem comes in when there is a typo or a non-existant file is entered in the config file. If the glob does not evaluate to an existing file/s on the system the code block does not execute.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

TIA, Chad.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: testing a file glob
by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Sep 23, 2002 at 22:01 UTC 
    $fileGlob = '/var/adm/messages.*';

my @file = glob $fileGlob;

if(not @file) {
#  glob was wrong or there were no files
}

for (@file){
#  do some things to check each file
}

    [download]

    Makeshifts last the longest.

[reply]
[d/l]

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