So I am writing a script that will backup the given file(s) to a Backups directory. I have the portion working for checking for the directory and creating a new one if it doesn't exist, as well as copying the original file to the directory with a new name.

What I want to be able to do now is do this for multiple files that are specified either with ARGV, or if the user forgets that, from either a comma or space separated list from STDIN. I'm not sure how to do this part however. Do I somehow do this with a foreach loop, or am I supposed to use a while? Do I need to push STDIN to an array using the comma or space as the delimiter?

Here's an example of my current code:

my $filename = shift @ARGV;
unless ($filename) {
    print "Enter file name(s) to be backed up:\n";
    $filename = <STDIN>;
    chomp $filename;
}

if ( -e $filename ) {
    if ( -d "Backups") {
        # copy file to directory
    }
    else {
        mkdir "Backups";
        # copy file to directory
    }
}

[download]

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Edit: I now have the script working to read multiple files from the command line, and I can take the space separated list from STDIN and input into an array. I still cannot figure out how to get it to step through each element of the STDIN array like I have it working for ARGV.

My if statements have been moved into a while loop: while ($filename). I added $filename = shift before I close out the while loop. The initial portion of my code has been updated to this (second try, this time trying an if/else):

if (!@ARGV) {
    print "Enter file name(s) to be backed up, separated by spaces:\n"
+;
    $filename = <STDIN>;
    chomp $filename;
    my @filenames = split(/\ /, $filename);
    $filename = shift(@filenames);
}
else {
    $filename = shift(@ARGV);
}

[download]

In reply to Process multiple filenames from command line or STDIN by Katanya

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