short dir listing

P0w3rK!d has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I am trying to perform a short directory listing "dir /b" in order to put the results into an array of files to be processed later on.

    my $cmd = "dir /b $dir\\*.bat";
    print "cmd = $cmd\n";
    my $ret = `$cmd`;
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Here is the error message:

cmd = dir /b C:\Dir\To\Scan\*.bat
dir: /b: No such file or directory
dir: C:DirToScan*.bat: No such file or directory
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What am I doing wrong here?

Note: I already tried this...
    my $cmd = "dir \/b $dir\\*.bat";
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Re: short dir listing by runrig (Abbot) on Oct 23, 2002 at 18:02 UTC
Another option is to use readdir: `chdir $dir or die "Can't cd to $dir: $!"; opendir DIR, $dir or die "Can't read $dir: $!"; my @files = map { "$dir\\$_" } grep { /\.bat$/ } readdir DIR; closedir DIR;` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: short dir listing by P0w3rK!d (Pilgrim) on Oct 23, 2002 at 18:07 UTC
Thank you. :)	[reply]
Re: short dir listing by tadman (Prior) on Oct 23, 2002 at 18:21 UTC
It might be a lot easier to use File::Find: `use File::Find; my @found; find({ wanted => sub { if (/\.bat$/i) # Catches 'bat' and 'BAT' { push(@found, $File::Find::name); } } }, $dir); print "$_\n" foreach (@found);` [download] Might need a bit of tweaking, but I think it's usually better to use modules than to call external programs.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: short dir listing by blokhead (Monsignor) on Oct 23, 2002 at 17:54 UTC
The backticks are interpolating your string a second time, see the example here: my $cmd = "echo \\t\\t"; print "$cmd\n"; ### prints: echo \t\t print `$cmd`; ### prints: tt [download] So either double the number of backslashes, use `quotemeta` on the string before you send it to the backticks, or change the first line of my example to use single quotes. Update: On second thought, maybe that's not what's happening. On my system, the backslashes were being interpolated the second time by the shell, not the backticks.. At least I think so ;) You're using windows, so I'm not sure what is happening. blokhead	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Re: short dir listing by P0w3rK!d (Pilgrim) on Oct 23, 2002 at 17:59 UTC
`$cmd = quotemeta($cmd); RESULT: cmd = dir\ \/b\ L\:\\Dir\\To\\Scan\\\*\.bat Parameter format not correct - "b\".` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: Re: short dir listing by Rich36 (Chaplain) on Oct 23, 2002 at 18:04 UTC
Either use forward slashes in the dir name instead of backslashes or escape the backslashes in your dir name. `$dir = 'L:/Dir/To/Scan'; # or $dir = "L:\\Dir\\To\\Scan";` [download] «Rich36»	[reply] [d/l]