Actually, I've been thinking about this and I think my preferred interface might be an object that lets you iterate in several directions so you can pick depth-first or bredth-first and decide to prune your search in what I consider more natural ways:

# The simple case like File::Find / File::Iterator
    my $iter= File::Whatever->new( $root );
    while(  $iter->NextItem()  ) {
        doSomething( $iter->GetFileName() );
    }

# Recurse yourself:
    my $iter= File::Whatever->new( $root );
    MyFunc( $iter );
    sub MyFunc {
        my $iter= shift(@_);
        # Uncomment next line for depth-first search:
        MyFunc( $iter )   while  $iter->PushPath();
        while(  my $file= $iter->NextFile()  ) {
            doSomething( $file );
        }
        # Uncomment next line for bredth-first search:
        #MyFunc( $iter )   while  $iter->PushPath();
        $iter->PopPath();
    }

# Example of pruning your search:
    my $iter= File::Whatever->new( $root );
    MyFunc( $iter );
    sub MyFunc {
        my $iter= shift(@_);
        while(  my $file= $iter->NextFile()  ) {
            doSomething( $file );
        }
        while(  my $sub= $iter->PushPath()  ) {
            if(  $sub =~ /debug/i  ) {
                $iter->PopPath();
            } else {
                MyFunc( $iter );
            }
        }
        $iter->PopPath();
    }

# Bredth-first search w/o recursion:
    my $iter= File::Whatever->new( $root );
    do {
        while(  my $file= $iter->NextFile()  ) {
            doSomething( $file );
        }
    } while(  $iter->NextPath()  );

# Bredth-first search w/ pruning w/o recursion:
    my $iter= File::Whatever->new( $root );
    do {
        while(  my $file= $iter->NextFile()  ) {
            doSomething( $file );
        }
        while(  $iter->NextPath() =~ /debug/i  ) {
            $iter->PopPath();
        }
    } while(  ! $iter->Finished()  );

# Depth-first search w/o recursion:
    my $iter= File::Whatever->new( $root );
    do {
        0   while  $iter->PushPath();
        while(  my $file= $iter->NextFile()  ) {
            doSomething( $file );
        }
    } while(  $iter->PopPath()  );

# Depth-first search w/ pruning w/o recursion:
    my $iter= File::Whatever->new( $root );
    do {
        while(  my $sub= $iter->PushPath()  ) {
            $iter->PopPath()   if  $sub =~ /debug/i;
        }
        while(  my $file= $iter->NextFile()  ) {
            doSomething( $file );
        }
    } while(  $iter->PopPath()  );

# The opposite of pruning:
# Only do things to files in directories named "debug"
    my $iter= File::Whatever->new( $root );
    do {
        if(  'debug' eq $iter->GetDirName()  ) {
            while(  my $file= $iter->NextFile()  ) {
                doSomething( $file );
            }
        }
    } while(  $iter->NextPath()  );
[download]

But I need to think about that a lot more before I'm sure that such makes sense or if I can make it better. (:

                - tye

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