You've not included the actual rename in there (which I suspect you're aware of) but the code won't work because you're match should be m/\s+/g - the \s matches whitespace rather than the /s you have. Also the s///g is slightly incorrect. A basic outline might look something like:

#!/usr/bin/perl

my $file = '.';

opendir(DIR,$file);
@files=readdir(DIR);
close(DIR);

for(@files)
{
    if ( m/ /g) {
        my $oldfile = $_;
        s/ /_/g;
        rename $oldfile, $_;
    }
    print $_."\n";
}
[download]

Of course, you need to consider what happens if you have a conflict such as what would happen if you had 2 files called 'test file' & 'test_file' - how would you handle this?

Hey, if there's code up ^^ there ^^, don't blame me if it doesn't work.

But today you took me walking, Through a land that we have lost,
While our children sit at websites, With no access to the cost

Of course, you need to consider what happens if you have a conflict such as what would happen if you had 2 files called 'test file' & 'test_file' - how would you handle this?

If it were me, I would build a hash of arrays, the key of the hash being the new file name, and the array elements being all files that would have that new name. Here's a quicky:

#!perl -w

use strict;

opendir(DIR,".") or die "Couldn't opendir on .: $!";

while($file = readdir(DIR)){
    my $oldfile = $file;
    $file =~ s/\s+/_/g;
    push @{$hash{$file}}, $oldfile;
}
closedir(DIR) or warn "Couldn't close directory .: $!";
foreach my $key (keys %hash){
    if(scalar(@{$hash{$key}}) != 1){
        print "The following files would have been renamed to the same
+ thing:\n"
        local $"="\n";
        print "@{$hash{$key}}", "\n";
    }
    else{
        print "$hash{$key}[0] -> $key "
        my $status = rename $hash{$key}[0], $key;
        if(!$status){
            print "Failed\n";
        }
        else{
            print "Succeeded\n";
        }
    }
}
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thor

Thank you!

What you do in your code is getting names of files froma directory and then changing the in-memory strings, which has no effect on the actual file. Try this (untested):

my $dir = '.';

require File::Spec;

opendir my $dh,$dir or die "$dir - $!";

while(defined(my $f = readdir($dh))){
    local $_ = File::Spec->catpath(undef,$dir,$f);

    next unless -f;

    $f =~ tr/ \t/_/s;

    my $np = File::Spec->catpath(undef,$dir,$f);

    rename $_ => $np or warn "rename '$_' to '$np': $!";
}

closedir $dh;
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Thanks, now can you explain these lines: What are these doing?

require File::Spec;
local $_ = File::Spec->catpath(undef,$dir,$f);
my $np = File::Spec->catpath(undef,$dir,$f);
[download]

See `perldoc -f require` and `perldoc File::Spec` for documentation.

--
http://fruiture.de

Thanks, now can you explain these lines: What are these doing? require File::Spec; local $_ = File::Spec->catpath(undef,$dir,$f); my $np = File::Spec->catpath(undef,$dir,$f);