First of all, don't worry about asking questions that you think are stupid.

Your code has a number of problems:

• The first open call will, AFAIK, always fail because you are chdir()ed to the directory that contains the directory you've just found. So you're trying to write to a file with the same name as a directory. See the section about "the wanted() function" in the File::Find manpage.
• I don't thint the space in "> $dir" is a good idea - do ">$dir" instead.
• What is $file? You only use it once as far as I can see. This is where use warnings; can help you.

Anyway, none of this really helps you solve your problem. I would put the directory listings in a separate directory. Take a look at this code (untested):

use strict; 
use warnings; 
use File::Find;

my $listings_dir = 'c:/listings'; 

find(\&callback, 'c:/tmp'); 

sub callback { 
  my $file = $_; 
 
  # Check to see if $file is a directory
  if (-d $file) {
    # Get a list of all the files in the directory (inefficient)
    # (If you only want the filenames rather than paths as well, 
    # investigate using File::Basename. If you want just the files
    # in a directory, and directories within the directory, 
    # consider putting grep { -f $_ } before the glob. 
    my (@files) = glob($File::Find::dir . "/$_/*"); 

    # Save this list to a file
    open LISTING, ">$listings_dir/list$_.txt"; 
    print LISTING join ("\n", @files); 
    close LISTING; 
  }
}
[download]

Good luck with learning Perl. I strongly recommend learning Perl properly--get yourself a copy of "Learning Perl". Your investment in learning Perl will pay back very quickly.

---

---

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! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

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:
	&		&
	<		&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.