I have a script that gets rid of blank spaces in my filenames but dont want it to overwrite another file that might have the same name. For example if my filename change was from "file name.txt" to "file_name.txt" I need to make sure there is not another "file_name.txt" so I dont overwrite an already existing file with my renaming. So I need to check if "file_name.txt" exists before I rename the "file name.txt". 
use strict;
my $file = '.';
opendir(MYDIR,$file);
my @files = readdir(MYDIR);

foreach $_ (@files)
{
next if($_ =~ m/^\.+$/); 
    if ( m/ /g ) 
    {
        my $oldfile = $_;
        s/ /_/g;
                    if (! -e $oldfile)
                    {
                         rename $oldfile, $_;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        print "Could not rename $_ because $oldfile na
+me already exists and can not be overwritten\n";
                    }
             
    }
print "$_\n";
}

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In reply to Checking for existing filename before renaming file by Anonymous Monk

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