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

I am a rookie with Perl so I am sure what I am trying to do can be done easier another way. I created a script to delete files from an Windows 2000 server. It worked fine but I moved this code from one machine to another Windows 2000 system and it does not work the same. I have the same version of Perl running on both machines. What is happening is it is deleting all the files in the folder/directory. The following is my code: 
use File::stat;
my ($logfile, $oldlogfile, @logfile);
my ($date, $sec, $min, $hour, $mday, $mon, $year);
my(@months) = 'Jan','Feb','Mar','Apr','May','Jun','Jul','Aug','Sep','O
+ct','Nov','Dec');

$archivedirin = "F:/data/archiveinbound/"; #Directory on the local mac
+hine where inbound data to purge resides.
$archivedirout = "F:/data/archiveoutbound/"; #Directory on the local m
+achine where inbound data to purge resides.
$logdir = "F:/PerlScripts/Logs/";  #Directory on the local machine whe
+re logs will be placed from purge.
$daysToPurge = 2; 

# name logfile with current date

($sec, $min, $hour, $mday, $mon, $year) = localtime(time);
$year += 1900;
 
$logfile = sprintf "purgelog-%4d-$months[$mon]-%02d.log",
             $year,$mday;
$errorlog = sprintf "errorlog-%4d-$months[$mon]-%02d.log",
             $year,$mday;
$date = localtime;
  
# open log message files
 open(LOGF, ">>$logdir$logfile") or die "can't open: $logfile\n";
 print LOGF "- - $date files that will be removed from archiveinbound 
+- - \n";
 
 open(ERRLOG,">$logdir$errorlog") or die "can't open: $logfile\n";
 print ERRLOG "- - errors from removal of files from archiveinbound on
+ $date\n";
 
# List inbound archive directory 
 opendir(DIR,$archivedirin)or die "can't opendir: $archivedirin\n";
 @filename = readdir(DIR);
 closedir DIR;
 
 foreach $filename(@filename){
     chomp $filename; 
     my $filepath = "$archivedirin$filename";
     stat($filepath);
     
     if(-f $filepath){
         print LOGF "$filename is older then $daysToPurge days and wil
+l be purged.\n"  if -M $filepath > $daysToPurge;
         unlink "$filepath" or print ERRLOG "can not remove file $file
+name from $archivedirin \n";
    }

}

# end of purge of inbound archive directory

print LOGF "- - end of archiveinbound purge $date - - \n";
print ERRLOG "- - end of archiveinbound purge $date - - \n";

# List outbound archive directory

opendir(DIR,$archivedirout)or die "can't opendir: $archivedirout\n";
@filename = readdir(DIR);
closedir DIR;

print LOGF "- - $date files that will be removed from archiveoutbound 
+- - \n"; 
print ERRLOG "- - errors from removal of files from archiveoutbound on
+ $date\n";

foreach $filename(@filename){
     chomp $filename; 
     my $filepath = "$archivedirout$filename";
     
     if(-f $filepath){
         print LOGF "$filename is older then $daysToPurge days and wil
+l be purged.\n"  if -M $filepath > $daysToPurge;
         unlink "$filepath" or print ERRLOG "can not remove file $file
+name from $archivedirout\n";
     }

}

[download]
Thank you, Mike

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Delete Files
by steves (Curate) on Feb 03, 2003 at 19:30 UTC

    Your if statement that's checking the modification times is only being applied to the print statement. The unlink is running against all files -- no conditional there.

[reply]
Re: Delete Files
by Cabrion (Friar) on Feb 04, 2003 at 00:53 UTC
    Your use of chomp is unnecessary. Read perldoc -f chomp, as it applies to stripping line endings from text files. readdir() doesn't return files names with a CR/LF on the end.

    Your use of stat() is also unnecessary. You aren't capturing it's return value

    To clarify the previous response:

    if (-f $filepath) says "if $filepath is a file then do everything in the following block of code"

    You probably want: 

    if (-f $filepath && (-M $filepath > $daysToPurge))

    [download]
    Which says "if $filepath is a file AND it's mod time is more than 3 days agao . . ."

    Can't say why it worked on the first machine. It shouldn't have.

    And just a tidbit that you might find helpful. It has nothing to do with perl but applies to the art of SysAdmin.

    Naming files as somefile-2003-Jan... isn't going to sort nicely when you do a DIR command or view the directory in explorer. That's because $somefile-2003-Feb.. will appear before the Jan file, etc. It's better to use numeric months for that reason. Perhaps I'm just anal. . .

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
Re: Delete Files
by runrig (Abbot) on Feb 04, 2003 at 01:28 UTC
    In addition to the other comments here, you can save yourself one stat per file if you use the cached "_" file, like this:
    
for my $filename (@files) {

  my $filepath = "$dir$filename";
  stat($filepath);
  if (-f _ and -M _ > $daysToPurge) {
    print LOGF "$filepath will be purged\n";
    unlink $filepath or print ERRLOG "Can't remove $filepath: $!";
  }
}

    [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
      Thank you all for your response. I used your information and it works great. I also changed the naming convention as it was pointed out it would not sort well.
[reply]

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