in reply to Hard disc pruner

I'd definitely do it with File::Find. Since you already have an array of files to keep, I'd convert this to a hash (paths/names to keep as they keys). Then use File::Find to loop through the filesystem and check to see if each file that File::Find locates is in the hash. If it is not in the hash, delete it.

Here's a simple codeup of my recomendation.... You should test it THOUROUGHLY before uncommenting the unlink line.. 

#!/usr/bin/perl -w


use strict;
use File::Find;

my %keep;

# load %keep with the filenames you want to keep...
# $keep{/bin/sh}=1;
# $keep{/sbin/ifconfig}=1;
# etc....

find(\&checkfile,'/');

sub checkfile{
  my $fname="$File::Find::dir/$_";
  if(!defined $keep{$fname}){
    print "deleting $fname\n";
#    unlink $fname;
  }
}

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RE: Re: Hard disc pruner
by mikfire (Deacon) on Jul 08, 2000 at 03:47 UTC
    Danger, Will Robinson, Danger! I really hope there are no directory names in that list of yours. Unlinking directories is usually a very bad idea - problems that even fsck has a hard time fixing can result.

    Having said that and realizing the caffiene/sleep ratio is far too high, lets have some fun. Can we do this in one line? Why, yes! 

    @dead = grep { ! defined( $keep{$_} ) &&
        ( -d $file ? rmdir : unlink ) && $_ } @files;

    [download]
    which will not call unlink on directories and return a list of the files deleted. It does assume that you have done a depth-first walk to generate the file names though. Now, this is useful, but I could generate the "expected to be blown away" list easier. What I would be interested in is the files that didn't get blown away. 
    @dead = grep { ! defined( $keep{$_} ) &&
        ( ( -d $file ? rmdir : unlink ) || $_ ) } @files;

    [download]
    Well this is cute, but why couldn't we blow the file away? 
    @dead = grep { ! defined( $keep{$_} ) &&
        ( ( -d $file ? rmdir : unlink ) || "$_:$!" ) } @files;

    [download]
    On second thought, follow lhoward's suggestion - this code is dangerous and will likely get you cursed by anybody having to maintain it.

    Mik Firestone ( perlus bigotus maximus )

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