Recursively run another script on every file in a directory structure. I know you can do the same thing with the "find" command, but the arguments required make my head hurt...

Usage:
(first, name it recurse.pl and put it in a directory in your PATH) 
recurse.pl /complete/path/to/other/script.pl dirname

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or, if you need arguments to your script 
recurse.pl "/complete/path/to/other/script.pl -blah" dirname

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might work (amazing that I haven't tested that).

Assumption:
The other script returns a 0 if it succeeds and something else if it fails. 
#!/usr/bin/perl

#this needs some comments...

chdir $ARGV[1];
@ls_retval = `ls -l`;
shift ( @ls_retval );
foreach $line (@ls_retval) {
    @items = split( /\s+/, $line );
    $first_char = substr( $items[0], 0, 1 );
    if ( $first_char eq 'd' ) {
        print "directory: $items[8]\n";
        print `$0 $ARGV[0] $items[8]`;
    } elsif ( $first_char eq 'l' ) {
        print "link: $items[8]\n";
        print `$0 $ARGV[0] $items[8]`;
    } elsif ( $first_char eq '-' ) {
        print "file: $items[8]\n";
        $action_retval = `$ARGV[0] $items[8]`;
        if ( $action_retval != 0 ) {
            print "Error $action_retval in $items[8]\n";
        } else {
            print "OK $action_retval for $items[8]\n";
        }
    }
}
print "Finished\n";

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Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Recursively run another script
by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Aug 08, 2003 at 00:54 UTC 
    use strict;
use File::Find;

my $action = shift;

find(sub {
    return unless -f;
    system($ARGV[0], $_) == 0
        or warn "Non-zero exit code for $_";
}, @ARGV);

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    Makeshifts last the longest.

[reply]
[d/l]
      Ok. Um - yes. That is *way* more elegant than my code.

      However, my code has no dependencies - which is important to me, at least, because (for reasons I'd rather not go into because they're bad for my blood-pressure) I can't use modules at work, which is where I use the code.
[reply]
        File::Find has been in the Perl core distribution forever. That's not a dependency any more than requiring a perl interpreter is a dependency.

        Makeshifts last the longest.

[reply]
        You code is quite dependant on os. If you wanted to avoid file::find you should at least use opendir to get your file list. But really in the end you'll be much better off if you get comfy with file::find
[reply]

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