> I strive to do minimal processing within the File::find wanted routine

So do I! I find I grow fewer grey hairs that way. ;) To illustrate, here's a simple example of using File::Find to find all .txt files under the current working directory.

use strict;
use warnings;
use Cwd;
use File::Find;

# Return a list of the absolute path of all plain .txt files under $di
+r
sub FindTextFiles
{
   my $dir = shift;
   my @files;
   # Note: -f = plain file (perldoc -f -X for doco of all file tests)
   find( { no_chdir => 1,
           wanted   => sub { -f && /\.txt$/ and push @files, $File::Fi
+nd::name }
         },
         $dir
   );
   return @files;
}

my $dir = getcwd();
my @txtfiles = FindTextFiles($dir);
print "Found ", scalar(@txtfiles), " text files under dir '$dir'...\n"
+;
for my $file (@txtfiles) {
   print "file='$file'\n";
   # could add code to modify the found files here ...
}
[download]

Example output of running this program:

Found 5 text files under dir 'C:/pm/file-find'...
file='C:/pm/file-find/example.txt'
file='C:/pm/file-find/fred/f1/zz.txt'
file='C:/pm/file-find/fred/f2/hello.txt'
file='C:/pm/file-find/fred/f2/f2a/2a.txt'
file='C:/pm/file-find/fred/f2/f2a/hello.txt'
[download]

Once I've built the list of files, I sometimes set about changing them in-place -- which is surprisingly tricky to do robustly, as described at Re-runnably editing a file in place (see also CPAN File::Replace by haukex, which nicely solves this problem).

A practice exercise for the OP: extend the test program above to change all occurrences of Peking to Beijing in the .txt files (which I sometimes torture job applicants with :).

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