Hello Monks,

I've been trying to diagnose trouble getting content to my site but could hardly wade through the tons of stuff, now mostly junk, that needed to be cleaned out. I tried to use filezilla to machete my way through it, but that goes very slowly when every page has an html component, a corresponding image component, and css as well. Therefore I decided that writing a script to delete entire classes of content was necessary.

I've got it far enough to where I'd like to ask for help. Here's the caller:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use 5.010;
use lib "template_stuff";
use html2;
use Net::FTP;

say "What keyword would you like to delete?";
my $word = <>;
chomp $word;
say "Delete everything associated with  $word? (Y for yes)";
my $answer = <>;
chomp $answer;
die unless ( $answer eq 'Y' or 'y' );

# main data structure
my %vars = (
  word  => $word,
  page  => 'pages',
  image => 'images',
  css   => 'css',
);
my $rvars  = \%vars;
my $rftp   = get_ftp_object();
my $rfiles = get_html_filenames( $rftp, $rvars );
my $rptr   = kill_files( $rftp, $rvars, $rfiles );
my @killed = @$rptr;
say "killed were @killed ";
__END__

[download]

Q1: Why is my die statement completely ineffectual? I tried ||, grouping with parens, and "". Do I just flub the logic?

I think the intent is pretty clear with the first 2 subroutines, omitted for brevity. There's nothing exotic about getting an ftp object. The reference is passed to get_html_filenames, which gets matches, sent back as another reference to an array. kill_files is very much a work in progress:

sub kill_files {
  use Net::FTP;
  use 5.010;
  use Path::Class;
  my ( $ftp, $rvars, $rfiles ) = @_;
  my %vars  = %$rvars;
  my @files = @$rfiles;
  my @killed_files;

  # kill html files
  for my $html (@files) {
    my $obj = file( '', $vars{page}, $html );
    my $string = $obj->stringify;
    say "string is $string";

    my $return = $ftp->delete($string);
    if ($return) {
      push( @killed_files, $html );
    }
  }

  # chop off ending
  foreach (@files) {
    $_ =~ s/\.html//;
  }
  say "now files are @files";

  # kill image directories
  for my $dir (@files) {
    my $obj = dir( '', $vars{image}, $dir );
    my $string = $obj->stringify;
    say "string is $string";

    my $return = $ftp->rmdir($string,1);
    if ($return) {
      push( @killed_files, $dir );
    }
  }

  # kill css file
  my $css_obj = file( '', $vars{css}, $vars{word} . '1.css' );
  my $string = $css_obj->stringify;
  say "string is $string";

  my $return = $ftp->delete($string);
  if ($return) {
    push( @killed_files, $html );
  }

  return \@killed_files;
}

[download]

I was getting good behavior out of this for building up the strings of files and directories to be deleted. The trouble came when I actually tried to delete them, and I got the following typical diagnostics:

Net::FTP=GLOB(0x92dc200)>>> DELE /images/potato1/.
Net::FTP=GLOB(0x92dc200)<<< 550 /images/potato1/.: Is a directory
Net::FTP=GLOB(0x92dc200)>>> RMD /images/potato1/.
Net::FTP=GLOB(0x92dc200)<<< 550 /images/potato1/.: Directory not empty

[download]

I was hoping that I could just cut off the directory branch with the rmdir method from Net::Ftp with recurse set to 1, but it would appear that I cannot.

Q2) Do I have to go into every one of these directories, delete every file, and only then will I be able to delete the directory itself? What's the best way of doing that without having to make a bunch of ftp requests?

As usual I'm also accepting any tips for style and reducing superfluous notation. Thanks for your comment.

In reply to script for deleting html, images and css from server by Aldebaran

Title:
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and:  <code> code here </code>
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