So besides reading PM and playing Perl golf all day at work, I occasionally get to use Perl to actually do some work. Like today, for example... A coworker wanted a bunch of HTML files in a directory renamed to be ASP files. Simple enough, I just:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my $dir = shift;

opendir DIR, $dir or die "Can't open $dir: $!";

foreach my $file ( grep /\.html|\.htm$/i, readdir DIR ) {
    ( my $newfile = $file ) =~ s/\.html|\.htm$/\.asp/i;
    rename "$dir\\$file", "$dir\\$newfile";
    print "Changing $dir\\$file to $newfile\n";
}

closedir DIR;

[download]

And later, when she asked if it were possible to search and replace text in a whole bunch of files, I proudly smiled and said, "Absolutely." So then I:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my $dir = shift;

opendir DIR, $dir or die "Can't open $dir: $!";

foreach my $file ( grep /\.asp$/i, readdir DIR ) {

    my $target = "<html>\n" .
                 "<head>\n" .
                 "<title>[^>]*<\/title>\n" .
                 "<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text\/ht
+ml; charset=iso-8859-1\">\n" .
                 "<\/head>\n\n" .
                 "<body bgcolor=[\"]#FFFFFF[\"]>";

    my $target2 = "<HTML>\n" .
                  "<HEAD>\n" .
                  "<TITLE>[^>]*<\/TITLE>\n" .
                  "<META HTTP-EQUIV=\"Content-Type\" CONTENT=\"text\/h
+tml; charset=iso-8859-1\">\n" .
                  "<\/HEAD>\n" .
                  "<BODY BGCOLOR=#FFFFFF>";

    my $replace = "<!-- #include file=\"popupHeader\.asp\" -->";

    print "Changing $dir\\$file...";

    open FILE, "$dir\\$file" or die "Can't open $dir\\$file: $!";

    my $text;
    {
        local $/ = undef;
        $text = <FILE>;
    }

    $text =~ s/$target/$replace/;
    $text =~ s/$target2/$replace/;

    close FILE;
    open FILE, ">$dir\\$file";
    print FILE $text;
    close FILE;
    print "Done.\n";

}

closedir DIR;

[download]

Now I was pretty pleased with myself that I've become acquainted enough with Perl to be able to write such awe-inspiring (at least to my coworker) scripts in about 20 minutes. What I'd like to know now is, how can I improve them? What did I do wrong? Is there a way to simplify them, so next time it comes up, it'll only take 5 minutes to write them?

"We're experiencing some Godzilla-related turbulence..."

In reply to One-shot code critique by patgas

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.